A Mask For Privilege Anti Semitism In America

296 M17 111

McWilliams i*2.75

A mask Tor privilege. . . .

29o »M17m

V

1

Keep Tonr Card in This Pocket

library cardf^ ^ issuec * ° n *Y on Presentation of proper

for twS 1 wee 1 £ >el R ! ,T^ ieiTWl ^' ^ ooka ma Y be retained
faced or muSlat^^ e ?J^? marked, de-

library desk; otherwise to ^P 01 *. same at

1 ” u

on this card. 6r 18 res P° n sible for all books drawn
notices. ^ over< l ue books 2c a day plus cost of
ported promptly?^ c ^ lan< ^ e °* residence must be re-

Public Library

Kansas City, Mo.

-Hfc

tension envelope corp.

DATE DUE

Why in America should the most sinister of all
social diseases have taken root? Why should that
disease have spread from its seemingly anachro-
nistic beginning in the Gilded Age until it infected
many of our great magazines and newspapers?
Until it determined not only where a man might
stay the night, but where he got his 'education and
how he earned his living? This book answers such
questions by exposing the myths with which the
prejudiced person surrounds his position. By tak-
ing away "the mask of privilege" it reveals the
source of race prejudice for what it is — the de-
termination of the forces of special privilege, with
their hangers-on, to maintain their select and ex-
clusive status regardless of the consequences to
other human beings.

Like Carey McWilliams’s previous books on
minorities in America, his brilliant analysis of
anti-Semitism reveals the facts of discrimination
and leaves the fogs of prejudice to be dispersed by
the truth. It traces the growth of discrimination
and persecution in America from 1877 to the
present, shows why the Jews, in the middle of the
middle class, are such good scapegoats, and con-
trasts the Jewish stereotype — "too pushing, too
cunning" — with' that of other minority groups.
Then it looks at the anti-Semitic personality and
concludes, with Sartre, that here is "a man who is
afraid” — of himself.

This book is a documented and forceful attempt
to inform Americans about the danger of the un-
democratic, antisocial practices in their midst, and
to suggest a positive program to arrest a course too
similar to that which recently led both persecutor
and persecuted to Buchenwald.

Books by Carey McWilliams

Factories in the Field
111 Fares the Land
Brothers Under the Skin
Prejudice

Japanese- Americans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance
A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America

A Mask for Privilege:

ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA

A Mask for Privilege:

ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA

By CAREY McWILLIAMS

cno c^s9 I am convinced myself that
there is no more evil thing in this present
world than race prejudice, none at all! I
write deliberately — it is the worst single
thing in life now. It justifies and holds to-
gether more baseness, cruelty and abomina-
tion than any sort of error in the world.

— H. G. WELLS

Little, Brown and Company • Boston • 1948

COPYRIGHT 1947, 1948 , BY CAREY MCWILLIAMS

f AL*L RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT
TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS
THEREOF IN ANY FORM

FIRST EDITION

Published March 1948

Published simultaneously
in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Those Fine Companions
and Irreplaceable Good Fellows

jerry ross McWilliams

and WILSON CAREY McWILLIAMS

Preface

When the United Nations finally voted on November 29 ,
1947, to partition Palestine, a responsibility without prec-
edent devolved upon the government and people of the
United States. The decision to re-establish a Jewish State
in Palestine, after the lapse of 2000 years, came in response
to the tardy initiative of the United States and the timely
concurrence of the Soviet Union and Great Britain. De-
spite the tortuous vacillation of American policy in the
past, a majority of the American people have always
favored the idea of a Jewish homeland. When the crucial
test came, it was this strong current of popular sentiment
that forced the State Department to redeem a promise
many times repeated to American Jewry. Having made
the motion, so to speak, to re-establish a Jewish State in
Palestine, it is now our clear moral responsibility to give
this state a chance to fulfill the promise so apparent in what
has already been accomplished in Palestine in the way of
rehabilitating Jewish life and culture.

But our special moral responsibility now transcends such
purely formal considerations: it goes to the question of our
integrity as a people. Six million European Jews — one
quarter of all the Jews in the world — were liquidated in
World War II. For all practical purposes, therefore, Europe
has ceased to be a center of gravity in Jewish affairs. To be
sure, a milli on and yjjj|pter Jews still live in Europe: twice
the number now to be found in Palestine. But to these

x Preface

survivors Palestine represents the one great hope for the
future. Nine out of ten Jews interviewed in the displaced
persons camps have expressed an understandable desire to
make their home in Palestine. For these survivors, Europe
is poisoned by intolerable memories and associations; nor
are they blind to resurgent outbursts of anti-Semitism which
have embittered their lives since the end of the war. While
the physical and economic security of the two million or
more Jews in the U.S.S.R. may be taken for granted, it is
apparent that the Soviet Union is not a refuge for the sur-
viving Jews of Europe, nor do these survivors look to it as
a center of Jewish life and culture. The plain fact is that
the United States and Palestine have now become the main
pivots of Jewish life — interrelated aspects of a single prom-
ise for the future. To such an extent is this true that one
simply cannot divorce the hope for Palestine from the fate
of Jews in America. “Should America’s democracy wither
away,” asks Israel Knox, “what Jews anywhere could live
in safety and security, even in Palestine?” If Palestine is the
lamp of Jewish life and culture in the world today, America
provides the fuel for this lamp and the shield for its flame.
Remove the shield of American support, or seriously weaken
the position of American Jewry, and the lamp now being
relit in Palestine would certainly be dimmed if not eclipsed.
This lamp is the one brave, hopeful beacon in the world
today for the surviving Jews of Europe, a people whose
claim upon the conscience of America is beyond argument
or debate.

World Jewry does not look to Europe for support at
this turning point in Jewish historp it looks to America.
That Europe has ceased to be a center of gravity in Jewish

Preface xi

affairs does not mean, of course, that it can be written off as
a place of residence for Jews. A great many Jews will con-
tinue to live in Europe, as Jews, and it is reasonable to
assume that much of their communal life will be gradually
restored. It is even possible to infer that the fever of anti-
Semitism may finally have burned itself out in Europe and
that the alarming symptoms of the disease to be noted in
so many quarters of Europe today are merely the spasms
of death. But to grant all this does not alter the significance
of the fact that the war has shifted the center of gravity in
Jewish affairs from Europe to the United States. While
Palestine is the spiritual and cultural center of Jewish life,
upon which Jewish hopes and aspirations throughout the
world are focused, the largest and most powerful segment
of World Jewry is to be found in the United States. The
measure of America’s power in the world today is the
measure of our responsibility to a people who, for 2000
years, have been the victims of man’s cruelty to man. If,
after all these centuries, the fires of anti-Semitism have
finally been extinguished in Europe — which is only a faint
inference, the available evidence pointing to a contrary
conclusion — then the meaning of the inference may well
be that the last great struggle against anti-Semitism will
center in the United States.

With America being committed to the protection of the
Jewish State in Palestine, various elements in this country
will unquestionably seek to exploit this new relationship
for their own ends and purposes. Just as England’s recent
difficulties in Palestine have contributed to the rise of anti-
Semitism in Great Britain, so it is possible to assume that
elements in America will seek to weaken the American

xii Preface

commitment to Palestine by isolationist demagoguery and
by various forms of Jew-baiting. Nor can one ignore the
fact that a Jewish State in Palestine is being bom at a time
when anti-Semitism in the United States has entered upon
a new and decisive phase. Perhaps the greatest peril to Pales-
tine, therefore, consists in the possibility of anti-Semitism
assuming serious proportions here. Should we ever permit
this to happen, we would not only have betrayed the hopes
and confidence of a desperate people: we would have be-
trayed American democracy.

The pivotal position which America now occupies in
Jewish life should alone dictate the wisdom of undertaking
at this time a thoughtful, sober, realistic scrutiny into the
na ture of anti-Semitism in the United States. As part of
this scrutiny, we need to find the answers to a number of
questions. Is it true that anti-Semitism lacks deep roots in
American life? Deep is a relative term: How deep? What
kind of roots? Are these roots withering or sending out
new shoots? Again we are told that anti-Semitism is a
disease; but what kind of disease? With what symptoms?
Why is it that this disease should be regarded, by many of
its victims, as essentially incurable? What is there about
anti-Semitism that has prompted its characterization as one
of the decisive problems of Western civilization? Can it be
that secret sources feed meaning and significance into the
racist ideology? If so, what are these sources? Is it true,
that there is some special elixir about the American en-
vironment that makes us immune to the virus of anti-
Semitism?

I would not suggest that completely satisfactory an-
swers will be found to these questions — which are very

Preface xiii

large questions indeed — in the following pages. What I
have attempted to do is to trace the pattern of anti-Semitism
in the United States; to examine as closely as possible the
theory that anti-Semitism is without deep roots in American
life; to raise certain questions about the nature of the disease
and to suggest how it can be most effectively combated.
Above all I have tried to challenge complacency and to
stimulate curiosity. The order of the chapters has been
planned with the thought of raising certain questions in
the mind of the reader and of forcing him to seek the an-
swers. The argument is intended to be suggestive rather
than dogmatic. I began this work by first seeking to find a
workable definition of anti-Semitism. After examining doz-
ens of definitions, I concluded that none of them was
satisfactory or in any sense adequate. In fact I discovered,
to my amazement, that the inadequacy of social theory in
relation to this crucial problem is a scandal for which every
social scientist in the United States should feel ashamed.
The reader should not, therefore, be inhibited or intimi-
dated: this is a subject, despite its antiquity and the volu-
minous literature about it, in which amateurs are at no great
disadvantage. Since, as the title indicates, it is my conviction
that anti-Semitism functions as a mask for privilege, I have
sought to remove the mask, to expose the process by which,
as Yves R. Simon has written, privileged groups manu-
facture a system of screens to mask their attempted monop-
oly of social, economic, and political power.

r McW.

Contents

Preface ix

i The White Frost 3

1. WHAT CAUSED THE FREEZE? — 2. THE WEDGE IS
DRIVEN — 3. THE TECHNIQUE OF DOMINANCE

ii From Little Acorns 23

1. A DELAYED REACTION — 2. RITUAL MURDER IN
AMERICA— 3. BOLT FROM THE BLUE — 4. THE
EVER-WIDENING STAIN

in The Snakes of Ireland 49

1. THE CLASSIC TRADITION — 2. THE MYTH-MAK-
ERS — 3. THE MYTH OF UNDESIRABILITY — 4. 1000
HARVARD GRADUATES — 5. THE BUFFALO AND THE
ANGLO-SAXON — 6. “PATHETIC PILGRIMS TO FOR-
GOTTEN SHRINES” — 7. CHRISTMAS EVE IN LITCH-
FIELD

iv A Most Peculiar Disease 80

VI. THE BEST OF SCAPEGOATS —'2. THE NATURE OF
THE J WEAPON— 3. BISMARCK’S INSECT POWDER —

4. THE ENEMY WITHIN

xv The System of Exclusion 113

1. THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION — 2 . THE OLD
SCHOOL TIE— 3. THE QUOTA SYSTEM

vi In the Middle of the Middle Class 142

1. THE MARGINAL MAN — 2. THE MARGINAL BUSI-
NESS — 3. THE MARGINAL CLASS — 4. ECONOMIC
PRESSURES AND GROUP DIFFERENCES

Contents

vii The Jewish Stereotype 162

1. SOCIAL MYTHS— 2. THE JEW AS MIGRANT

vm The Function of the Crackpot 184

1. SAPPERS AND SHOCK TROOPS — 2. THE ARM-
CHAIR ANTI-SEMITES — 3. AMERICAN ACTION

ix The Atlanta Putsch 207

1. THE LEADERS — 2. THE BACKGROUND — 3. THE
DENOUEMENT

x No Ordinary Task 223

1. DRAIN THE SWAMPS — 2. REMOVE THE BARRIERS
— 3. PREJUDICE IS INDIVISIBLE — 4. DEFINE A REAL
SCAPEGOAT — 5. TAKE AWAY THE WHIP — 6 . “WHEN
THE DEMAGOGUE COMES TO TOWN”

xi The Yellow Myth 262

Notes 271

Acknowledgments 279

Index 281

A Mask for Privilege:

ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA

CHAPTER I

The White Frost

In the summer of 1877, Joseph Seligman, the New York
banker, was bluntly and noisily refused accommodations
for himself and his family at the Grand Union Hotel at
Saratoga Springs. Here, simply stated, was one of the first
major overt manifestations of anti-Semitism in the United
States. 1 This is not to say, of course, that minor incidents
had not previously occurred; nor would it be accurate to
say that Jews were everywhere treated with perfect equal-
ity prior to 1877. But by and large, the record up to this
point had been largely free of overt or significant mani-
festations of anti-Semitism.

That there had been prior “incidents” is, of course, well
known. In 1861 the Board of Delegates of American Israel-
ites had succeeded in changing an act of Congress stating
that army chaplains must be ministers of “some Christian
denomination”; in 1864 the Board brought about the defeat
of attempts by church leaders to declare this a Christian
country by an amendment to the Constitution; and discrim-
ination against Jewish students had cropped out in 1872 at
what is now the College of the City of New York. 2 It is
also true that General Grant had issued a rather notorious
order on December 20, 1862, expelling “Jews as a class”
from his lines, an incident which is described at some length
in the American Jewish Historical Society Publications,
Number 17 (1909), pages 71-79. But none of these inci-
dents aroused the interest that the Seligman case provoked

4 A Mask for Privilege

and it will be noted that all of them occurred shortly prior
to this case, indicating that it was around this time that the
first significant tensions developed.

Both the wide publicity given the Saratoga Springs inci-
dent and the wealth of comment which it aroused indicate
that this initial manifestation of anti-Semitic prejudice came
as a distinct shock to American public opinion. William
Cullen Bryant, in an editorial, said that “a prejudice so
opposed to the spirit of American institutions” could have
only a momentary existence in this country and urged the
Seligmans “to view with scientific curiosity, rather than
personal annoyance, the survival, in such a remnant, of a
medieval prejudice.” Today one is impressed with the air
of surprise and incredulity reflected in the editorial com-
ments devoted to the incident. That it should have been
regarded as utterly anachronistic and completely at variance
with contemporary custom is the best proof that incidents
of this sort were virtually unknown in 1877. Much the
same surprise was occasioned when, at about the same time,
a prominent Jewish lawyer was denied membership in the
New York Bar Association. 3

To appreciate the significance of the Saratoga Springs
incident, however, the principals must be identified. Joseph
Seligman had emigrated from Bavaria in 1837 because, so
his biographer states, “he had become dissatisfied with the
lack of opportunities for Jews in Germany.” With his
brothers, he had founded the well-known banking firm of
Seligman Brothers in New York. Although they had arrived
as penniless immigrants, the Seligmans were well-educated
and cultured men and could hardly be regarded as nouveaux
riches. Henry Ward Beecher, who had summered with the

The White Frost

5

Seligmans for several seasons prior to 1877, said that they
had “behaved in a manner that ought to put to shame many
Christian ladies and gentlemen.” During one of the darkest
hours of the Civil War, Joseph Seligman had undertaken,
at his own suggestion, to dispose of a large government
bond issue in Europe. The historian William E. Dodd has
characterized the successful fulfillment of this mission as
scarcely less important to the Union cause than the Battle
of Gettysburg. Largely in recognition of these services,
Seligman had been offered the post of Secretary of the
Treasury by President Grant.

In 1877 the Grand Union Hotel was owned by Judge
Hilton, a prominent New York politician, and A. T. Stew-
art, the well-known New York merchant. Born in Ireland,
Stewart had arrived in America as penniless as the Selig-
mans and, like them, had risen to a position of great wealth
and prominence. A notice in the Dictionary of American
Biography points out that Stewart was notoriously penuri-
ous, a shrewd, harsh disciplinarian whose wage policies had
once aroused widespread criticism. Legend has it that the
coffin containing his remains was stolen and held for ransom
by persons who had resented his dictatorial manner. Clearly
personifying the new forces that had come to dominate
the American scene after the Civil War, it was Stewart,
not the Seligmans, who belonged in the nouveau riche
category. The locale of the incident is also important. The
Grand Union Hotel epitomized the parvenu splendor of
the gilded ■age. Through its luxurious grounds strolled the
millionaires who had emerged with such abundance in the
postwar period.

On June 24, 1877, Henry Ward Beecher preached a

6 A Mask for Privilege

famous sermon on the Saratoga Springs incident at Plym-
outh Church. “What have the Jews,” he said, “of which
they need be ashamed, in a Christian Republic where all
men are declared to be free and equal? ... Is it that they
are excessively industrious? Let the Yankee cast the first
stone. Is it that they are inordinately keen in bargaining?
Have they ever stolen ten millions of dollars at a pinch
from a city? Are our courts bailing out Jews, or compro-
mising with Jews? Are there Jews lying in our jails, and
waiting for mercy, and dispossessing themselves slowly of
the enormous wealth which they have stolen? You cannot
find one criminal Jew in the whole catalogue. It is said that
the Jews are crafty and cunning, and sometimes dishonest
in their dealings. Ah! What a phenomenon dishonesty must
be in New York! Do they not pay their debts when it is
inconvenient? Hear it, O ye Yankees! ”

Urging the Seligmans to be patient “under this slight
breath, this white frost, this momentary flash of insult,”
Beecher said that the incident was as the bite of a mosquito
to a man in his whole armor. The sermon ended on the
note that there should be “no public assemblies called, no
resolutions passed, no more unfortunate letters written,
no recriminations, no personalities.” Was this incident, as
Beecher thought, merely a slight breath, a white frost, a
momentary flash of anti-Semitism? A mosquito is truly an
insignificant insect, but it may be a carrier of malaria.

A decade after the incident occurred, Alice Hyneman
Rhine wrote an interesting article for the Forum (July
1887) on “Race Prejudice at Summer Resorts.” In the
course of this article, she said (my emphasis) : “This preju-
dice, in its outward expression at least, is a new feature in

The White Frost 7

the New World. Only 'within the present decsjfie has there
been an anti-JewisfiTsentiment openly displayed in the
United States.” From Saratoga Springs, Miss Rhine found
that the practice of excluding Jews had spread throughout
the Catskills and Adirondacks and that, within a decade, the
practice had become so well established that it no longer
aroused comment.

Surprised that the practice should have spread so quickly,
Miss Rhine interviewed a number of resort owners. “Jews
swarm everywhere,” she was told; “they are lacking in
refinement” — in the gilded age! — “as shown by the promi-
nence of patent Jeather boots, showy trousers, and the con-
spicuousness and vulgarity of their jewelry.” Shades of
Diamond Jim Brady! Charging that Jews monopolized the
best accommodations, the resort owners in the same breath
complained that they were “close and penurious.” Unlike
some latter-day observers, Miss Rhine thought that the
emergence of a pattern of social prejudice at summer resorts
was neither trivial nor insignificant. It was precisely at
fashionable summer resorts, in her view, that a latent preju-
dice was most likely to find expression.

No one seems tp have noticed that the Saratoga Springs
incident had an interesting sequel. Jesse Seligman, one of
the brothers, had been a founder of the Union League Club
of New York and at one time its vice-president. But he
resigned from the club in 1893 when his son was black-
balled for membership because he was a Jew. Apparently
anti-Semitism was unknown or of little force when the
Union League Club was formed. But it is equally apparent
that something had happened to change the social climate
in New York between the Civil War and 1893. Henry

8 A Mask for Privilege

Ward Beecher’s “white frost” had, it would seem, turned
into a hard freeze.

1. WHAT CAUSED THE FREEZE?

What Charles Beard has called “the second American
Revolution” — the revolution that assured the triumph of
the business enterprise — had been fought and largely won
by 1877. “In 1865,” writes Matthew Josephson, “three-
quarters of the American people set to work instinctively,
planlessly, to build a heavy industry where there had been
almost nothing of the sort, and to produce twice as much
goods, food, and wealth of all kinds, as they had produced
in 1860.” 4 In four great lines of endeavor — manufacturing,
extractive industries, transportation, and finance — business
marched from one swift triumph to another. In 1860 about
a billion dollars was invested in manufacturing plants which
employed 1,500,000 workers; but in less than fifty years
the investment had risen to 12 billions and the number of
workers to 5,500,000. The output of American iron and
steel — true measures of industrial power — had been far
below the tonnage of England and France in 1870; but
within twenty years the United States had outdistanced
both nations. Even in retrospect, it is difficult to measure
the swiftness and the magnitude of the transformation
which the second American Revolution worked in Ameri-
can life.

The year 1877 was of decisive importance in determin-
ing the fate of this revolution. A bloody and riotous year,
violence was everywhere evident in the America of 1877.
The great railroad strike of that year was the first signifi-

The White Frost

9

cant industrial clash in American society. “Class hatred,”
writes Denis Tilden Lynch, “was a new note in American
life where all men were equal before the law.” 5 The South
was in the turmoil of reconstruction; sand-lot rioters ruled
in San Francisco; and 100,000 strikers and 4,000,000 unem-
ployed surged in the streets of Northern cities. At a cabinet
meeting on July 22, 1877, the suggestion was advanced that
a number of states should be placed under martial law. For
a moment, the issue seemed to hang in the balance; but
after 1877 it became quite clear that the industrial bour-
geoisie had triumphed. With society being transformed by
processes which the people did not understand and by
forces which they could scarcely identify, American public
opinion seemed aloof, vague, indecisive, suffering from war
weariness and exhaustion.

Once triumphant, the industrial tycoons discovered that
they could not function within the framework of the social
and political ideals of the early Republic. To insure their
triumph, a new social order had to be established; a new
set of institutions had to be created of which the modern
corporation was, perhaps, the most important; and a new
ordering of social relationships had to be effected. “In the
swift transformation of the whole economic order,” writes
Beard, “the very texture of American society had been
recast.” A new hierarchy of social, economic, and political
command was imposed on American society, and with this
hierarchy came a new set of status relationships. “The loco-
motive,” wrote E. L. Godkin, “is coming in contact with
the framework of our institutions.” With the industrial
machine came the political machine. Dating from 1870,
the “boss system” had become so thoroughly entrenched

id A Mask for Privilege

in American politics by 1877 that public life was every-
where discredited by the conduct of high officials. 6 Men
began to question the value of democracy as they saw the
robber barons ride roughshod over the rights of the people
and as they witnessed an almost universal corruption of the
ballot. This questioning led, in many cases, to an eventual
repudiation of the earlier American ideals and traditions.

As the revolution swept forward, it uprooted the earlier
democratic cultural pattern with the ruthlessness of a tor-
nado. The simplicity of taste which had characterized the
“classic’’ years of the early Republic gave way to a wild,
garish, and irresponsible eclecticism. “The emergence of
the millionaire,” writes Talbot Hamlin, “was as fatal to the
artistic ideals of the Greek Revival as were the speed, the
speculation and the exploitation that produced him.” In one
field after another, the wealth of the new millionaires was
used to corrupt the tastes, the standards, and the traditions
of the American people.

“It was in the seventies,” wrote Partington, “that good
taste reached its lowest ebb. ... A veritable debacle of
the arts was in process . . . and that debacle was an ex-
pression of profound changes taking place at the bases of
society.” Godkin applied the term “chromo civilization” to
the works of a generation dwelling between two worlds,
the one dead, the other seeming powerless to be born. “The
dignified culture of the eighteenth century, that hitherto
had been a conserving and creative influence throughout
the Jeffersonian revolution, was at last breaking up. Disrup-
tive forces . . . were destroying that earlier culture and
providing no adequate substitute . . . and until another
culture could impose its standards upon society and re-
establish an inner spiritual unity, there would be only the

The White Frost

1 1

welter of an unlovely transition.” 7 To many Americans it
may have seemed as though this debacle were being brought
about by changes in the population through immigration;
but the real dynamic — the transforming process — was to
be found in the industrial revolution itself. In this sense
both the breakup of the earlier culture and the rise of anti-
Semitism were symptoms of the profound transformation
taking place at the bases of society.

In the two decades prior to the Civil War, Emerson,
Whitman, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, and Lincoln —
to mention only the giants — had richly fulfilled the promise
of the earlier democratic culture and its traditions. But their
spirit did not carry over into the years of the second Ameri-
can Revolution when Big Business occupied the country
like an alien armed force. While a new culture started to
grow in these years, its promise was never realized. Peirce,
Shaler, Marsh, Gibbs, Ryder, Roebling, Eakins, Richard-
son, Sullivan, Adams, and LaFarge, as Lewis Mumford has
written, are names that any age might proudly exhibit;
but “the procession of American civilization divided and
walked around these men,” much as it divided or walked
around the earlier tradition and culture upon which their
work was based. The tragedy of the artist in these years
consisted in his deep-rooted hostility to the society ushered
into being by the rise of the industrial bourgeoisie who had
succeeded in vulgarizing and intimidating American cul-
ture. Something of the “drought and famine” of which
most of the artists of the period complained must have
been sensed and experienced by wide elements in the popu-
lation. For the new industrial culture was neither satisfying
nor meaningful; it lacked sustenance.

The nature of the cultural transformation that accom-

12

A Mask for Privilege

panied the second American Revolution has never been
more graphically described than in a passage from Thor-
stein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (emphasis
added). “The wave of revulsion,” he wrote, “seems to have
received its initial impulse in the psychologically disinte-
grating effects of the Civil War. Habituation to war entails
a body of predatory habits of thought, vo hereby clannish-
ness in some measure replaces the sense of solidarity, and a
sense of invidious distinction supplants the impulse to equi-
table, everyday serviceability. As an outcome of the cumu-
lative action of these factors, the generation which follows
a season of war is apt to witness a rehabilitation of elements
of status both in its social life and in its scheme of devout
observances and other symbolic and ceremonial forms.
Throughout the eighties, and less plainly traceable in the
seventies, also, there was perceptible a gradually advancing
wave of sentiment favoring quasi-predatory business habits,
insistence on status, anthropomorphism, and conservatism
generally.”

One of the ways in which this new clannishness and
insistence on status expressed itself at the expense of the
older solidarity was in an effort to achieve unity, out of the
chaos of the times, by the negative device of opposing
something — the Negroes, the Chinese, the Indians, the
foreigners. For these outsiders furnished a counterconcep-
tion upon which, as Oscar Handlin has noted, “all the quali-
ties the community feared and disliked could be ascribed
and around opposition to which it could unite.”

In 1879 about 177,000 immigrants had arrived in America;
but by 1882 the annual influx had risen to 788,000. Faced
with a growing competition for place and power, their

The White Frost

J 3

security threatened by the forces of a rampant industrialism,
the groups identifying themselves with the dominant cul-
tural pattern sought to maintain that pattern at all costs.
For it was in part through such dominance that they hoped
to retain their status. After the Civil War, status lines were
drawn more sharply than ever before and the struggle for
status became one of the major motivations in American
culture. There is, therefore, much meaning in the opening
sentence of Booth Tarkingtoris The Magnificent Amber-
sons: “Major Amberson had ‘made a fortune’ in 1873, when
other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of
the Ambersons began then.” Feeling the pinch of the new
economic dispensation, the native Americans and the older
immigrant groups sought to exclude first one group and
then another from identification with the dominant cultural
symbols. A remarkable correlation developed between na-
tionality and status; between race and status; and, to a lesser
degree, between religion and status. In an increasingly in-
secure world, the maintenance of status distinctions created
the illusion of security and group differences of all kinds
suddenly acquired a new meaning. “In spite of the mag-
nificent dimensions of our continent,” wrote Hjalmar H.
Boyesen in 1887, “we are beginning to feel crowded.” In
view of these tendencies — all too briefly sketched here —
it is not surprising that the first overt manifestation of anti-
Semitism should have occurred in the summer of 1877.

2. THE WEDGE IS DRIVEN
For the first time in the history of the nation, the minori-
ties question became important in this same period. To be

14 A Mask for Privilege

sure, the issue had previously arisen with the Irish and
Roman Catholicism; but the Know-Nothingism of this
earlier period came into much sharper focus after the Civil
War. There is a sense, for example, in which it can be said
that an Indian problem had not existed prior to 1876. Until
the last Indian tribes had been pacified, an Indian problem
could not arise. Our prior relations with Indians had been
those of one belligerent to another; but once pacification
had been effected we were confronted with the problem
of what to do with the Indian. The moment we adopted
a reservation policy (and the reservation policy dates from
the seventies) and failed to invest the Indian with citizen-
ship, a deep wedge had been driven into the fabric of
American democracy.

Similarly a Negro problem hardly existed prior to the
Emancipation Proclamation. Until the Negro had become
a nominal citizen, a Negro minority problem could not
arise. No problem occasioned more doubt and uncertainty
in the post-Civil-War period than the question of what to
do with the freedmen. In one sense, the situation was quite
unique, for as Beard has written there had suddenly been
created “a large and anomalous class in the American social
order — a mass of emancipated slaves long destined to
wander in a hazy realm between bondage and freedom.”
Nothing just like this, adds Beard, had ever happened in
history, at least on such a scale. And in the confusion of
the period — to which the Negro problem contributed —
the issue was fatefully compromised after first being cor-
rectly resolved.

In adopting the Fourteenth Amendment, the American
people had set forth a broad and daring policy toward
minorities. Not only did the amendment greatly extend

The White Frost

*5

the frontiers of American democracy, but it was adopted
for the specific purpose of making it clear that the federal
government could, and by inference should, affirmatively
safeguard the civil rights of all citizens against the unlaw-
ful actions of the states and private groups. To carry this
policy into effect, Congress then adopted the Civil Rights
Act, which was aimed at eliminating such practices as the
exclusion of Joseph Seligman from the Grand Union Hotel.

But the Supreme Court held the act unconstitutional —
in defiance of the purpose, meaning, and intention of the
Fourteenth Amendment. In an equally perverse decision,
the court then proceeded to give to corporations the pro-
tection that the amendment had intended for human beings.
Having thus opened the door to discrimination, the court
later placed the stamp of its positive approval upon the
practice of segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In a
vigorous dissenting opinion, Justice Harlan prophetically
warned that the effect of this decision was “to permit the
seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanctions of law.”
The emasculation of the amendment by the courts had the
effect, of course, of creating a second-class citizenship for
Negroes.

Oriental immigration confronted the American people,
in the post-Civil- War period, with still another challenge
to the democratic concept. Professing its inability to cope
with anti-Chinese agitation in California, the federal gov-
ernment paid a series of heavy indemnities to China for acts
of violence against the persons and property of Chinese
nationals. For the Supreme Court decisions which had made
it impossible to protect the rights of the Negro had also
made it impossible to protect the rights of the Oriental.
In an effort to escape from this humiliating position, the

1 6 A Mask for Privilege

federal government was then forced to adopt the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882. Representing a radical departure
from traditional American policy, this act laid the founda-
tion for a series of subsequent exclusion measures finally
culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924 which was
in part aimed at excluding further Jewish immigration.
While Congress had extended the privilege of citizenship
to “aliens of African nativity and persons of African de-
scent,” it refused to extend this privilege to Oriental immi-
grants. It then only remained for the courts to rule, as they
did for the first time in 1878, that Chinese were “ineligible
to citizenship.” Thus the wedge was driven still deeper.

Strange as it may seem, the Chinese Exclusion Act is
related to the problem of anti-Semitism. When the act was
passed in 1882, an active anti-Semitic movement had just
been organized in Germany. “The German anti-semites lost
no time,” writes Gustav Karpeles, “in pointing to the ex-
clusion of Chinese from the United States and using it in
all seriousness as an example which would gradually pre-
pare the way in public opinion for sentiment in favor of
the exclusion of the Jew.” 8 Other writers have commented
on the parallel and called attention to the fact that alien
Orientals were denied the privilege of farm ownership on
the West Coast much as Jews had been denied this right
in Europe.®

When anti-Japanese agitation developed on the West
Coast, the government found itself powerless to protect the
treaty rights of Japanese nationals or the rights of American
citizens of Japanese descent. In attempting to prevent the
San Francisco School Board from segregating Japanese stu-
dents, President Roosevelt quickly discovered that the

The White Frost

i7

Supreme Court had robbed him of any legal basis for in-
tervention. Informal exclusion of further Japanese immi-
gration, which Roosevelt was then compelled to negotiate,
was followed by formal exclusion in 1924 and by the denial
of citizenship to the first-generation Japanese.

While similar measures were not enacted against Euro-
pean immigrants, it is nevertheless apparent that they were
also being singled out as scapegoats. On March 14, 1891, a
mob stormed the jail in New Orleans and lynched eleven
Italian immigrants. The Italian government withdrew its
ambassador when the federal government confessed its in-
ability to cope with situations of this kind. One could, in
fact, document literally hundreds of similar riotous actions
in the seventies, eighties, and nineties which involved attacks
on minorities.

Surveying this record in retrospect, one notes the growth
after 1876 of a dualism in federal policy toward minority
groups. By its failure to protect civil rights, the federal
government indirectly sanctioned discrimination against
minorities. Placing Indians on reservations, stripping Ne-
groes of effective protection, excluding further Oriental
immigration, drawing the color bar in naturalization pro-
ceedings, holding the Mexican-American population of
New Mexico and Arizona at arm’s length for a sixty-four-
year period, pursuing a similar policy in Hawaii and Puerto
Rico, tolerating violence against the foreign-bom, adopting
a “national origins” quota system — all these acts indicate
the growth of a tradition of bigotry and intolerance dating
from the triumph of the industrial revolution. Hence the
pertinence of Ralph Ellison’s observation that “since 1876
the race issue has been like a stave driven into the Ameri-

1 8 A Mask for Privilege

can scheme of values, a stave so deeply imbedded in the
America ethos as to render America a nation of schizo-
phrenics.”

3. THE TECHNIQUE OF DOMINANCE

The tycoons that rose to power with the triumph of the
second American Revolution were, as Charles Beard has
pointed out, largely of North European stock, mainly Eng-
lish and Scotch Irish, and of Protestant background, as a
rollcall will readily confirm: Gould, Vanderbilt, Hunting-
ton, Hill, Harriman, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Cooke, Mor-
gan, Armour. Only Gould, in the characteristic phrase of
Henry Adams, “showed a trace of Jewish origin.” The
first threat to the unchallenged dominance of these indus-
trial tycoons came from German- Jewish immigrants in the
United States.

At the time of the first census in 1790, there were only
about 2000 Jews in the United States in a population of
approximately 2,000,000. From this figure the number in-
creased to about 250,000 in 1880. This increase was largely
made up of German Jews who, like the Seligmans, had
been discouraged by the wave of reaction which had en-
gulfed Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Swept
immediately into the current of westward expansion, the
German Jews were carried far from the ports of entry. In
the rapidly growing communities of the Middle West, the
Far West, and the South, many of these immigrants made
the transition from peddler to prosperous merchant with
extraordinary swiftness. In such cities as Cincinnati, Chi-
cago, Louisville, St. Paul, Dallas, San Francisco, and Los

The White Frost

19

Angeles, German Jews were accorded a high status based
upon priority of setdement — they were among the “first
families” — and the wealth and distinction which they had
achieved. The mention of such names as Straus, Rosen-
wald, Seligman, Warburg, Schiff, Morgenthau, Sloss, Sutro,
and Lubin is alone sufficient to indicate this amazing up-
ward mobility.

That the first overt manifestation of anti-Semitism in
the United States took place in 1877 is to be explained in
terms of the corrosion which the industrial revolution had
brought about in the American scheme of values and the
revolutionary democratic culture and its traditions. But
that this initial act should have taken place in the upper
reaches of society, and that it should have assumed the form
of social discrimination is to be explained by the rapid
rise of German Jews in the new social and economic hier-
archy. As prosperous and successful merchants, bankers,
and traders, the German Jews could not be altogether ex-
cluded from the civic and social life of the communities
in which they had settled; but they could be made to feel
a subtle sense of rejection, and limitations could be imposed
against their further encroachment on the citadels of power.
The erection of these invisible barriers at the top levels
of society was largely prompted by the feeling that, at
this level, they were to be regarded as serious competitors
for place and power. While the non-Jewish tycoons were
prone to war among themselves, they were quick to pro-
tect their social power and dominant position in American
industry by the exclusion of these agile newcomers. In
the period from 1840 to 1880, when the bulk of the
German Jews arrived, some 10,189,429 immigrants en-

20

A Mask for Privilege

tered the United States. Lost in this avalanche of peoples,
the German Jews were numerically insignificant and
aroused almost nothing in the way of popular antagonism
or hostility. It was only in the upper reaches of society that
their remarkable success excited feelings of envy and dis-
dain.

Social discrimination always lays the foundation for sub-
sequent discriminations of a more significant character,
first, in the sense that it has a tendency to check the proc-
ess of assimilation and to emphasize differences; and sec-
ond, in the sense that it forces the minority to develop its
own social institutions. Once the latter development has
taken place, the minority feels that it has insulated itself
against discrimination and regards the uneasy equilibrium
thus established as a permanent and satisfactory adjust-
ment, which is never the case. Had the German Jews not
met with systematic social discrimination, integration for
all Jews in America would have been much easier. Once
having acquiesced in the pattern of social discrimination,
the spokesmen for American Jewry were thereafter blinded
to those aspects of Jewish experience in America that did
not square with their thesis that the battle against anti-
Semitism had been won in the United States.

It was precisely the capacity of the German Jews for
assimilation that most distressed their upper-class rivals.
Hoffman Nickerson in his book on The American Rich
(1930) points out, with evident approval, that the upper
classes in this country had forced the Jew to renounce “his
hope of concealing his separateness in order to rise to power
within non-Jewish societies, half unseen by those among

21

The White Frost

whom he moves.” It was the American rich who checked
this tendency. “Had the American rich accepted social re-
lations and intermarriage with the Jews to the same extent
as the French or the British rich, the comparative looseness
and fluidity of our social structure might well have bogged
us down badly in the hopeless blind alley of assimilation-
ism”! Fortunately, from Nickerson’s point of view, we had
“no classes of poor nobles or gentlefolk open to the tempta-
tion of marriage with rich Jews and able on their side to
obtain a measure of social recognition for their Jewish part-
ners.” The American rich had raised the social bars just in
time so that “the larger organism might continue its life
without harmful disturbances.” This was much the same
view as that expressed by Hilaire Belloc. 10 fThere had been
no trace of anti-Semitism in the United States, according to
Belloc, through the early and middle nineteenth century.
When it did arise, it took the form of certain social preju-
dice among the wealthier classes in the East.” ^

Thus when the doors of the Grand Union were slammed
in the face of Joseph Seligman, an important precedent had
been established. And it is not without significance that
this precedent was established along with other precedents
of a similar nature involving Indians, Negroes, and Ori-
entals, all as part of a new status system which arose in
America in the latter part of the last century. The Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882 led directly to the passage of the
Immigration Act of 1924 which was largely aimed at the
exclusion of further Jewish immigration. When correlated
with other phases of the minority problem which began
to loom large after 1 876, it is, indeed, apparent that the Sara-

22

A Mask for Privilege

toga Springs incident was not a slight breath, a white frost, a
momentary flash of insult. For once the pattern of social
discrimination and exclusion had been established against
Jews, the way was cleared for later anti-Semitic manifesta-
tions of a far more serious character.

CHAPTER II

From Little Acorns

In the annals of the American Jewish Yearbook, the years
from 1910 to 1916 seem to mark a noticeable upsurge in
anti-Semitism. Articles in the press by Jewish writers com-
mented upon a “deep-seated and widespread antipathy”
against Jews and pointed to the existence “under an appar-
ently calm surface of a general antagonism.” In 1909 Ray
Stannard Baker reported that the Christian churches in
America had “awakened as never before to the so-called
Jewish problem” and had intensified their proselytizing
activities. Social discrimination was the subject of numer-
ous reports and much comment. 1 In a series of articles,
Norman Hapgood pointed out that a sharp line separated
Jews from Gentiles in America and concluded that anti-
Semitic prejudice was becoming more distinct. “Ameri-
cans do not deprive Jews of any rights, 1 ’ he wrote, “but
they do not on the whole like them.” 2 In fact, Hapgood
concluded that the situation in America in 1915 was ap-
proximately the same as in Germany. For in Germany, too,
the cruder forms of discrimination were then unknown:
“There is no pale of settlement, no denial of ordinary edu-
cation. The discrimination is in the upper walks of life, in
general exclusion from participation in university, political,
and military life.” Dr. Richard Gottheil reported that “so-
cial ostracism” was increasing in America and John Foster

24 A Mask for Privilege

Fraser, in one of the first anti-Semitic books published
in this country, observed in 1916 that “the white-skinned
American has a feeling of repulsion from the Jew. . . .
The antipathy for the Jew is only surpassed by the general
recognition that the Negro should be kept in a state of per-
petual inferiority.” 1 * 3

rKeTormatlbn of the Anti-Defamation League in 1913
and the enactment in that year of a civil-rights statute in
New York (passed at the request of Jewish organizations)
indicate that American Jews had come to sense a distinct
change in the social atmosphere. “Of late years,” reads the
American Jewish Yearbook, “various hotel-keepers have ad-
vertised extensively in the newspapers and through circu-
lars, and by means of other publications, that Jews or He-
brews are not accepted as guests; that Hebrew patronage
is not solicited or desired. Railroad companies and steam-
boat companies have issued folders in which appear similar
advertisements.” That anti-Semitic prejudices were becom-
ing more pronounced is shown also in the calling of a con-
ference in 1915 on “racial prejudice against Jews” and by
continued “incidents” of social discrimination. For exam-
ple, J. McKeen Cattell of Columbia University resigned,
about this time, from the Century Club in protest against
the rejection of the application of the distinguished scien-
tist Dr. Jacques Loeb of the Rockefeller Institute. What sig-
nificance can be found in this upsurge of anti-Semitism?

1. A DELAYED REACTION

In the period following 1880 rapid industrialization had

created in the United States an enormous demand for work-

From Little Acorns 25

ers at a time when the flow of immigrants from Great Brit-
ain, France, and Germany had begun to abate in response
to a similar industrial expansion in these countries. Since
so many of the native-born Americans were constantly
drawn westward by the promise of new economic oppor-
tunities, a vacuum was created in the industrial centers
which was filled by shifting the point of recruitment to
the south, east, and southeastern portions of Europe where
the great bulk of the European Jews resided. In these areas,
industrialism was either retarded or was being developed
on so narrow an economic base as to bring about a deter-
mination to expel rather than to attract workers. For ex-
ample, Russian industry was operated on far too narrow
a base to absorb a large addition to her urban classes, while
a rising non-Jewish middle class in Poland had begun to.
clamor for the jobs and functions that had been filled for
many years by Jews . 4

The assassination of Czar Alexander II on March 13,
1881, provided the Russian government with an excuse for
launching a movement deliberately aimed at forcing the
Jews within the Pale of Settlement to emigrate. Over 163
pogroms were reported in Southern Russia alone and these
pogroms were followed by the enactment of the May Laws
of May 3, 1882. Anti-Semitism became, in the phrase of
Solomon F. Bloom, “a settled policy of the state, a policy
implemented by ‘spontaneous’ outbursts of suborned mobs.”
Much the same motivation prompted the enactment of
severe anti-Semitic measures in Rumania and Austria in
the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Terrified by the prospect of their own countries being
flooded with Jewish immigrants, the well-placed Jews of

2 6 A Mask for Privilege

Western Europe hit upon the idea of directing this stream
of immigration to America. At a time when Great Brit-
ain was receiving only 2500 Jewish immigrants a year
(New York City alone was then receiving about 11,000 a
month), Parliament adopted the Aliens Act of 1906 aimed
at excluding further Jewish immigration. The effect of
this measure, and of similar measures enacted on the Con-
tinent, was to shunt the refugees across the Atlantic. Shar-
ing the alarm of their well-placed brothers in Europe, the
German Jews in America brought great pressure to bear
upon the government to remonstrate against anti-Semitic
measures in Russia. Thus President Harrison, in a message
to Congress of December 9, 1891, said that “a decree to
leave one country is in the nature of things an order to
enter another — some other. This consideration, as well as
the suggestion of humanity, furnishes ample ground for the
remonstrances which we have presented to Russia” (empha-
sis added) . That the remonstrances were unavailing, how-
ever, is shown by the arrival of 1,467,266 Jews from Russia,
Rumania, and Austria between 1880 and 1910, an average
for the period of 48,908 a year.

When the East European Jews landed in Boston and
New York, no tide of westward expansion carried them
beyond the ports of entry. A definite pattern of urban im-
migrant settlement had been established by 1880 and into
this slum complex the Jews were inexorably drawn. Moving
into already established “foreign” sections, crowding the
tenements to overflowing, they took the places in industry
previously filled by earlier immigrants. Since most of them
were incredibly poor (40 per cent arrived with less than
thirty dollars) and had families to support, they took what-

From Little Acorns

27

ever jobs were available. In the eighties the garment indus-
try, in which many of them had worked, was at about the
same level of technological development in the United States
as in Europe. This factor, as well as the lack of training in
other crafts, the absence of strict apprenticeship require-
ments, and the circumstance that the industry was largely
controlled by German Jews, brought large numbers into
the needle trades.

While the Orthodox East European Jews were cultur-
ally more sharply set apart from the native-born popula-
tion than the German Jews, what really distinguished the
two groups was the fact that the German Jews had settled
here fifty years earlier, under far more favorable circum-
stances, and were already “Americanized.” Actually many
of the German Jews were from Posen, Moravia, and other
provinces right on the frontier of Eastern Europe and
might well have been regarded as Eastern Jews themselves.
Fearful of their hard-won and already threatened status,
the German Jews at first looked down upon their eastern
brothers “as a grotesque species of ill-bred savages,” al-
though at a later date external pressures forced them to
come to the aid of their “unprepossessing co-religion-
ists.”

If one may judge public opinion by the periodical press,
then the first great waves of Jewish immigration provoked
litde adverse comment. In fact, the East European Jews
seem to have aroused a mixture of contempt and pity rather
than a feeling of competitive hostility. Since so many of
them were concentrated in the needle trades in New York,
they were removed to some extent from direct competition
with other groups. Furthermore, the sympathies of the

28 A Mask for Privilege

American people had been aroused by the repressive meas-
ures enacted in Russia and by the pogroms. That the dem-
agogic American Protective Association — the A.P.A. —
movement of the late eighties and nineties ignored the
Jews is, perhaps, the best confirmation of this fact. In
general, the public reaction justifies Oscar Handlin’s con-
clusion that “there was no correlation at all between the
arrival of foreigners and the intensity of the hostility to
them.” * Just as the German Jews had not aroused much
in the way of enmity until they came to be sensed as
competitors, so the East European Jews were largely ig-
nored until the second generation began to impinge on the
native middle class. While heavy Jewish immigration had
something to do with the rise of a strong antialien move-
ment after 1900, the correlation is neither direct nor causal.
The reaction to Jewish immigration was a delayed reaction,
as shown by the fact that the antialien movement reached
its maximum strength fifty years after the commencement
of large-scale Jewish immigration and at a time when Jew-
ish immigration had already begun to decline.

The explanation for this “delayed reaction” has been
pointed out by Dr. A. L. Severson. Studying discriminatory
want ads in the Chicago press, Dr. Severson concluded that
the basic factor underlying opposition to the employment
of Jews and Catholics was “the flow into the clerical mar-
ket of second-generation East Europeans.” This movement
did not reach significant proportions until about 1910. For
example, Severson found no discrimination against Jews
reflected in the want-ad columns from 1872 to 1911. Be-
ginning in the latter year, however, ads requesting “Chris-
tians only” or “Gentiles only” appeared at the rate of 0.3
per cent per 1000, rose to 4 per cent in 1921, to 8.8 per cent

From Little Acorns

2 9

in 1923, to 13.3 per cent in 1926; averaged 11 per cent
from 1927 to 1931; dropped to 4.8 per cent in 1931; and
then rose to 9.4 per cent in 1937. Most of the discrimina-
tory ads were for female office employees, indicating that
the second-generation girls were beginning to seek white-
collar employment. The first discriminatory resort ad, inci-
dentally, appeared in 1913.

If Dr. Severson’s thesis is accepted, then one can say that
it was not East European Jewish immigration, per se, that
touched off latent prejudices; nor was it any “cultural con-
flict” between Jews and non-Jews. The decisive factor was
the appearance, on the clerical labor market, of a new group
of competitors who could be identified for purposes of dis-
crimination.® The moment this happened, the doors to
clerical and white-collar jobs began to be slammed in the
face of Jewish applicants much in the same manner that the
doors of the Grand Union Hotel had been slammed in
the face of Joseph Seligman.

Prior to 1880, the immigrant’s chief task had been the
relatively easy one of “Americanizing” himself in a rural
environment or frontier community. But with the rise of
industrialism the position of the immigrant was rapidly
transformed. As more immigrants became workingmen*
their problems were easily confused with issues which
were beginning to generate conflict between capital and
labor. As a consequence, all immigrants suffered a loss of
prestige in the eyes of those who were determined to main-
tain the traditional American pattern of an open society.
It was this change in the status of immigrants, not the
change in the character of immigration after 1880, that
accounts for the new attitudes toward the “alien” and “the
foreigner.” Thus, as Stow Persons has pointed out, “the

30 A Mask for Privilege

most striking aspect of the immigrant problem in industrial
America has been the tendency on the part of native Amer-
icans to transform the economic and social conflicts of in-
dustrialism into culture conflicts wherever the immigrant
has been concerned .” 2 * * * * 7

While avoiding the use of the word “Jewish” as far as
possible, a myth was evolved about the East European
Jews based upon a point-by-point comparison with the
“desirable” German Jew. This distinction made it pos-
sible for people to be anti-Semitic while professing great
admiration for certain successful Jews. The presence of a
large mass of “unassimilated” East European Jews had the
effect, also, of inducing the German Jews to acquiesce in
the Maginot line of discrimination that was being erected
against them in the upper walks of society. Since they were
being politely excepted from the “undesirable” category,
they failed to challenge the validity of the distinction. At
the same time, the stiffening of opposition to “undesirable”
Jews gave an added impetus to social discrimination which
the German Jews consistently rationalized as trivial and
sought to evade by parallel social institutions which served
in turn to emphasize differences.

2 . RITUAL MURDER IN AMERICA

In 1911 America, along with the rest of the civilized

world, had been deeply shocked by the Beilis “ritual mur-

der” trial in Europe. Even in pogrom-ridden Europe, ritual

murder prosecutions seemed utterly anachronistic in 1911,

a grisly survival of medieval superstition. But that a ritual
murder trial, bedecked with fancy nativistic trimmings.

From Little Acorns 31

could take place in the United States was a possibility that
never occurred to the writers of indignant American edi-
torials devoted to the Beilis case.

On April 27, 1913, the dead body of Mary Phagan, four-
teen years of age, was found in a pencil factory in Marietta,
Georgia. Leo Frank, a young Jew, twenty-nine years of
age, a graduate of Cornell University, was part owner and
manager of the factory. In a note written before her death,
Mary Phagan had charged an unnamed Negro with having
assaulted her in the factory. At the time of the crime,
Frank and a Negro, Jim Conley, were the only persons
in the building. Yet the law enforcement officials lost no
time in convicting Frank on the uncorroborated testimony
of the Negro. For the word of a Negro to be given this
weight in a murder prosecution against a white man in
Georgia was, in itself, a rather remarkable manifestation
of anti-Semitic prejudice.

Prior to 1913, Tom Watson, the Georgia demagogue,
had been violently anti-Catholic; but apparently he had
never realized, before the Frank case, that Jews could be
made the target of a vicious demagogic attack. But no
pogrom organizer in Czarist Russia ever leveled a more
savage, ruthless, and unprincipled attack against Jews than
Watson did in this case. “Every student of sociology
knows,” he wrote, “that the black man’s lust after the white
woman is not much fiercer than the lust of the licentious
Jew for the Gentile.” Parenthetically, it is interesting to
note that, in this campaign, Watson used certain conclusions
of the distinguished American sociologist, Dr. Edward A.
Ross, to bolster his demagoguery.

When the Governor of Georgia commuted Frank’s sen-

32 A Mask for Privilege

tence, Watson denounced him as “King of the Jews.” While
Watson’s Magazine was screaming for his blood, in a long
series of inflammatory articles and editorials, poor Frank
was beaten to a pulp and knifed by white and Negro pris-
oners. Later, on August 16, 1915, he was taken from the
prison hospital by a mob and hanged on the outskirts of
Marietta. Following the lynching, Watson continued to
repeat the old charge of ritual murder against the Jews
and denounced the world- wide campaign to save Mendel
Beilis as the same type of “conspiracy” that had won free-
dom for Dreyfus.

Looked at coldly, what was there to distinguish the
Leo Frank case from the Beilis case? Mendel Beilis man-
aged to escape death in Kiev, Russia, under the Czar in
1911; but Leo Frank was lynched in Georgia, U.S.A., in
1915. The innocence of Frank, established by careful in-
vestigations, is today universally admitted. In light of the
Frank case, how could it any longer be said that there was
some special elixir about the American environment that
made it immune to the virus of anti-Semitism? Yet pre-
cisely this contention continued to be voiced, by Jew and
Gentile, long afterwards.

Born in Georgia in 1856, the son of a Georgia squire,
Tom Watson had been an outstanding progressive, a
leader of the Populist Party, and “the first native white
Southern leader of importance to treat the Negro’s aspira-
tions with the seriousness that human strivings deserve.” 8
Robbed of two elections to Congress by fraud and vio-
lence, Watson had become embittered and had turned
against his old Negro allies in Georgia. The champion of
Negro rights in the nineties, he led the fight to disenfran-

From Little Acorns

33

chise Negroes in 1906 with its tragic sequel in the Atlanta
race riot of that year. Old friends and supporters began to
ask, “What is the matter with Tom Watson?” and one ob-
server said, “He is like a hydrophobic animal ... he is
snapping and biting at nearly everything nowadays.” One
cannot recite these bare facts of the Watson story with-
out realizing that the culture that produced these two Tom
Watsons was, in some sense, a schizoid culture, a culture
in which two traditions were in sharp conflict.

5 . BOLT FROM THE BLUE

In its report on the war years, the American Jewish
Yearbook concludes on the optimistic note that “the ter-
mination of hostilities has brought to an end the abnormal
conditions which . . . resulted in a number of instances of
anti-Jewish discrimination.” And then, like a thunderclap,
Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent in the issue of May 20,
1920, suddenly discovered “the Jewish problem.” There
had been, of course, some premonitory rumblings from
the Sage of Dearborn. During the war years, he had vaguely
intimated that “a small clique” was pushing President Wil-
son toward war. Later Ford said that it was not until about
1916, “on the peace ship,” that “the full importance of the
subject came into view.”

The son of an Irish immigrant, born on a farm near
Dearborn in 1863, Ford had become by 1920 a world-
famous figure, an oracle whose views were eagerly solicited
on every domestic and international question. Nothing
reflects the terrible swiftness with which America had
made the transition from the Frontier to the Big Money

34 A Mask for Privilege

quite as vividly as Ford’s career. Incorporated in 1903, the
Ford Motor Company had assets of $536,000,000 in 1923
and its revenues averaged $8,000,000 a month. The genesis
of Ford’s anti-Semitism is to be found, therefore, not in
the influence of sinister forces close to the throne, but in
the circumstances by which this country boy with a talent
for tinkering with machines had become overnight a multi-
millionaire and an elder statesman.

It would be difficult to overestimate the damage which
Ford’s vicious, persistent, and heavily financed anti-Semitic
campaign caused the Jews of the world. From 1920 to 1927,
the Dearborn Independent conducted a relentless anti-
Semitic campaign. With a circulation of 700,000 copies,
the paper had a powerful grass-roots following, particularly
in the Middle West. From the pages of the Independent ,
anti-Semitic diatribes were collected, edited, and published
in book form: The International Jew, Jewish Activities in
the United States , Jewish Influences in American Life , and
Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States . No figures
are available to indicate how many copies of these four vol-
umes were published, but they came off the presses in a
seemingly unending stream and circulated throughout the
world. What made these volumes doubly poisonous was
the circumstance that they carried the imprint, not of some
crackpot publisher in an alleyway of Chicago, but of one
of the most famous industrialists in the world. It is one of
the cruel ironies of history that the savage anti-Semitism
which developed in Germany after the First World War
should have been stimulated in part by an American indus-
trialist who, in a number of respects, was so typical a prod-
uct of American culture. If one correlates the period of
Ford’s active anti-Semitism with developments in Ger-

From Little Acorns 35

many for the same period, it becomes apparent that, in one
sense, Hitler began where Ford left off. 9

Nowadays it has been charitably forgotten that, as part
of this campaign, the Dearborn I?zdepende?zt tried to manu-
facture an American Dreyfus case. For three years, the paper
sought to pin a murder charge on Captain Rosenbluth in
connection with the accidental death of another officer at
an army post near Tacoma. Although a military court
of inquiry had found that the death was accidental, the
Independent went to incredible lengths to make it appear
that this finding had been brought about by sinister influ-
ences working “behind the scenes.” It has been estimated
that over $200,000 was spent in the successful effort to
extricate Captain Rosenbluth from these unfounded and
utterly malicious charges. Dragged through the state and
federal courts, the Rosenbluth case might easily have be-
come an American Dreyfus case had it not been for the
vigilance of the leaders of American Jewry, notably Felix
M. Warburg and Herbert H. Lehman.

By a curious lapse of memory, most Americans have also
forgotten that Ford’s campaign was not an isolated adven-
ture. In fact, it was part of a loosely organized nationwide
anti-Semitic campaign, the first in American history. 10 Re-
vived in 1916, the Ku Klux Klan first began to attract a
large mass following in 1920 when Ford launched his cam-
paign against the Jews. Both campaigns were part of a
larger antialien movement which culminated with the pas-
sage of the Immigration Act of 1924. Coming when the
need for a liberal immigration policy was never more obvi-
ous, the passage of this act profoundly shocked the leaders
of American Jewry. As Louis Marshall pointed out in a
memorandum to Congress: “For the first time in the history

36 A Mask for Privilege

of American legislation there has been an attempt to dis-
criminate in regard to European immigration between those
who come from different parts of the continent. It is not
only a differentiation as to countries of origin, but also of
racial status and of religious beliefs.” That the debate on
the measure took the form of a discussion of “quotas” and
“restriction” cannot disguise the fact that it was, in large
part, aimed at the exclusion of further Jewish immigration.
Proponents of the measure said that it was aimed at the
Jews and suggested that “we might just as well be frank
about it.”

Passage of this act marks a turning point in modern Jew-
ish history. For the act had the effect of barring the prin-
cipal avenue of escape for the Jews of Eastern Europe and
of riveting their attention more firmly than ever upon Pal-
estine as an ultimate homeland. Cut off from further nu-
merical reinforcements, the Jews in the United States were
forced to depend upon themselves; to develop an American
Judaism. The measure altered the physical basis of Ameri-
can Jewish life, shaped the structure of Jewish institutions,
and profoundly influenced the social psychology of Ameri-
can Jews. For example, passage of the act accelerated the
movement of the second generation into white-collar occu-
pations. In the period from 1900 to 1925, about 50 per cent
of Jewish immigration had been absorbed in industry and
in the handicraft trades; but after 1924 the Jewish popula-
tion tended to become predominantly middle classT

Seen in this perspective, it is apparent that the anti-
Semitic movement after the First World War was not a
crazy flash-in-the-pan affair, but a reflection of forces long
maturing in American life. The movement collapsed, in

From Little Acorns 37

fact, largely because these forces had not yet reached full
maturity, and also, of course, because the postwar boom
robbed the movement of much of its popular appeal. Who-
ever it was that prepared The International Jew for Mr.
Ford was clearly aware that organized anti-Semitism be-
longed more to the future than to the period from 1920 to
1927. On page 56, for example, one reads that “anti-semitism
in almost every form is bound to come to the United
States”; again, on page 64, “anti-semitism will come to
America”; and, on page 66, “the whole problem will cen-
ter here” (emphasis added). Actually Ford had been re-
buked more for the violence with which he had expressed
his views than for his anti-Semitism per se. Henry Adams
Gibbons said, at the time, what other publicists were
saying who also “deplored” Ford’s anti-Semitism: “For
the Jews it is either into the melting-pot or back to the
Ghetto.” 12 After 1920 the existence of anti-Semitism in
the United States had become, as Mr. Gibbons said, “a
demonstrated fact.”

“Lately,” wrote Louis Weitzenkom in the Nation of
May 4, 1921, “I have been made aware of my Jewishness.”
Certainly the pattern of anti-Semitic incidents after 1920,
quite apart from Ford’s campaign and the revival of the
K.K.K., was in itself sufficient to reawaken a consciousness
of Jewish identity in thousands of American Jews. In Feb-
ruary 1922, the head of placement in a Chicago employ-
ment office reported that 67 per cent of the requests for
employees specified that Jews were not wanted. A sur-
vey of teacher agencies in the Middle West in 1925 re-
vealed that from 95 per cent to 98 per cent of the calls
for teachers requested “Protestants only.” In August 1922,

38 A Mask jor Privilege

the Sharon, Connecticut, Chamber of Commerce distrib-
uted a leaflet requesting property owners not to sell to
Jews. A bulle t in of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce
advocated specific restrictions against “the Hebrew ele-
ment.” The board of directors of a Milwaukee golf club
asked eight Jewish charter members to resign. Well-docu-
mented charges were filed that the American consular serv-
ice was honeycombed with anti-Semites. 13 On June 21,
1927, three Jewish interns in Kings County Hospital in
New York were dragged out of bed in the middle of the
night, bound, gagged, and ducked in a bathtub of ice
water. An official inquiry later confirmed charges of anti-
Semitic practices and policies in this institution. When a
four-year-old girl disappeared at Massena, New York, on
September 22, 1928, the local rabbi was called to answer
charges of “ritual murder” on the Day of Atonement. The
secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in St. Petersburg,
Florida, announced that the time had come to make St.
Petersburg “a 100% American Gentile City.” An official
in Bryan County, Georgia, acknowledged that Jews were
automatically excluded from jury polls in that area. A pam-
phlet distributed by several large real estate companies in
New York complained of an increase in the number of
Jewish realtors. Several large real estate concerns in New
Jersey, New York, Georgia, and Florida were found to
have restricted new subdivisions against Jewish occupancy.
Excluded from a hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey, Nathan
Straus proceeded to build Laurel-in-the-Pines.

Of more than passing interest, in this period, was Presi-
dent Lowell’s graduation address at Harvard in June 1922,
in which he advocated quotas against Jews. While the

From Little Acorns

35

trustees of Harvard later rejected this suggestion, it was
painfully apparent that the quota system was spreading.
Two years after the First World War, Columbia Univer-
sity cut the number of Jewish admissions by 40 per cent.
The whole question of quotas was frankly discussed at a
meeting of the Association of Medical Colleges in Novem-
ber 1929. Actually the situation in the prep schools and
colleges had first attracted attention at an earlier date. 14
Between 1914 and 1930, the quota system had become well-
established in most Eastern colleges and universities. What
the spread of the quota system signified, as Heywood Broun
pointed out, “was nothing less than a silent cultural assent
to the Klan crudity that "this is a white man’s country.’ ”

Despite these unmistakable symptoms of a universally rec-
ognized disease, the American Jewish Yearbook for 1929
concludes with the comment that “the past year witnessed
a practical cessation of all anti-Jewish propaganda.” While
the election returns in Germany in September 1930-wete"
disturbing, still they seem to have aroused no more serious
apprehension than the continued pattern of anti-Semitic in-
cidents in the United States. “While several Jewish organ-
izations in the United States were deeply stirred by the
results of the German elections,” reads the Yearbook, “they
took no action, knowing that the sister community in Cen-
tral Europe is well able to deal with the situation.”

Nor were Jews alone guilty of a failure to correlate the
world-wide manifestations of anti-Semitism after the First
World War. The proposal to establish a quota system at
Harvard coincided with the demand of Aryan student or-
ganizations for the revival of a numerus clausus policy
at the University of Berlin . 15 Still later, when ghetto benches

40 A Mask for Pjivilege

had been ordered for Jewish students ia Polish universities,
two hundred non- Jewish American scholars protested the
action but said not one word about the quota system in the
United States . 16 I dare say that Pan} Masserman and Max
Baker accurately reflected the opinioa of most Americans,
Jews and Gentiles, on the possibility of anti-Semitism be-
coming a serious factor in America om the eve of Hitler’s
conquest of power. “Anti-Semitism in America,” they
wrote, “is still a subtle, whispered thing; something sensed,
felt under the skin, as it were. In all probability, it will
never amount to more than that .” 17

4. THE EVER-WIDENMQ STAIN
By 1933 it was clearly apparent, however, that anti-
Semitism had entered upon a new phase in America. “In
the United States,” wrote Johan J. Smertenko, “prejudice
against the Jew has been markedly noticeable for twenty-
five years. At first the manifestations of it were so trivial
that it seemed absurd to take them seriously, much less to
combat them. . . . But gradually the blot of discrimina-
tion spread into an ever-widening stain of ostracism — from
society to the school, from schools and offices to shops and
factories. And there followed, as a matter of course, exclu-
sion from common privileges and communal enterprises.
Today it is no secret that Jews hare great difficulty in
gaining admission to the institutions of higher learning and
that their opportunities for legal and tn<edical training are
limited to a minimum. It is equally well-known that the pro-
fessions of banking, engineering, and teaching are closed
to all but a few, and the quasi-pubLic service corporations

From Little Acorns 41

vigorously exclude them. In the mechanical trades, the dis-
crimination is almost as widespread as in the professions,
and in clerical work, generally speaking, it is worst of all.” 18

This new phase was to be distinguished from earlier man-
ifestations of anti-Semitism, first of all, by the increased
evidences of economic discrimination. “Formerly,” writes
Morris S. Lazaron, “anti-Jewish discrimination here was al-
most exclusively social; today it is economic, which is much
more serious .” 19 While the depression affected all groups,
it had special significance for the Jews. As the competition
for jobs increased, special barriers against Jews multiplied.
So striking was this development that a student of the Jew-
ish employment problem concluded in 1930 that “the nor-
mal absorption of Jews within the American economic
structure is now practically impossible.” As the depression
deepened, the struggle to enter the “free professions” be-
came more intense than ever before. Prominent New York
Jews even advocated quotas as “an economic necessity.”

The new phase was also characterized by a sharp in-
crease in the number of organized anti-Semitic groups. Ac-
cording to Dr. Donald S. Strong, 121 organizations were
actively spreading anti-Semitic propaganda in the United
States between 1933 and 1940. It should also be noted that
this propaganda barrage concentrated on the Jew-Com-
munist theme and soft-pedaled the Jew-Capitalist line.
“There is no doubt,” to quote from the American Jewish
Yearbook , “that the fact that there are Jews who are com-
munists is today perhaps the most widely used anti-Jewish
propaganda material .” 20 “There is no way of calculating
the effect of anti-Jewish agitation during the past two
years,” the Yearbook for 1936 reported, “the first time in

42 A Mask for Privilege

American history that it has been carried on by so many
agencies and on so wide a scale.” As the crisis deepened,
anti-Semitism began to take on the most unmistakable
political overtones; nor was it long before certain reaction-
ary politicians began to echo the anti-Semitic themes de-
veloped by the organized groups.

In a speech in Congress on May 29, 1933, Louis T.
McFadden, for twenty years a Republican member of
Congress from Pennsylvania, made a violent attack on
the Jews of America. Rabbi Lee J. Levinger has character-
ized this speech, and I believe accurately, as “the first open
evidence of political anti-semitism in the United States of
America.” 21 As the 1936 campaign approached, anti-Semi-
tism became a favorite symbol of the native fascist groups.
The fake Benjamin Franklin letter on the Jews first made its
appearance on February 3, 1934; the first meeting of the
Union for Social Justice was held in Detroit on April 24,
1935. In a speech in the fall of 1935, the manager of the
Coughlin-Lemlce third party charged that “the trouble
with this country now is due to the money powers and
Jewish politicians. . . . The American people must shake
off their shoulders the Jewish politicians.” During the 1936
campaign Alf Landon was forced, again and again, to dis-
avow various anti-Semitic “angles” that some of his sup-
porters kept injecting into the issues. A fake birth certifi-
cate, purporting to prove that Frances Perkins was of
Jewish descent, was widely circulated in this campaign.
For the first time in American political history, anti-Semi-
tism was used as a deliberate propaganda device in a presi-
dential election. By the end of 1936, even the historian of
the American Jewish Yearbook was somewhat alarmed:

From Little Acorns 43

“Anti-Semitism is not far from the surface in American
life ... it would require comparatively little provocation
to bring it to the surface”!

Underlying this new outcropping of anti-Semitism was
a factor directly related to the earlier agitation. Through-
out the nineteenth century, the lowest positions in the oc-
cupational system had been filled by the most recent immi-
grant groups. In the Chicago stockyards, for example, the
labor force was originally of Irish descent; later predomi-
nantly Polish and Italian; and still later Mexican and Negro.
“Thus every group,” wrote Talcott Parsons, “except the
most recent, has had someone to look down upon. In a
sense our system of social stratification has been an incom-
plete one, in a state of parasitism with regard to the recent
immigrants. It is clear that with the closing of the frontier
and the consequent halt to economic expansion, as well as
with the virtual cessation of immigration, this situation is
rapidly disappearing” 22 (emphasis added). In other words,
one consequence of the passage of the Immigration Act of
1924 had been to narrow the range of possible scapegoats.

After the election of 1936, there was a slight pause in
the developing anti-Semitic agitation (the thumping Roose-
velt victory was doubtless responsible for this recession);
but by 1937 anti-Semitism was being used more brazenly
in American politics than at any prior period in our history.
By midsummer 1939 as many as sixty anti-Semitic street
meetings were being held in New York each week, most
of them organized by the Christian Front and the Chris-
tian Mobilizers. On December 22, 1940, LaGuardia an-
nounced that 238 arrests had been made in the preceding
six months for inflammatory street speeches, disturbances,

44 A Mask -for Privilege

and the like. “The emergence of anti-semitism as a political
platform,” reported the Y earhook, “was probably the out-
standing development of 1939.”

The key figure in this developing political anti-Semitism
was Father Charles Coughlin. While there had been cer-
tain overtones of anti-Semitism in his propaganda prior to
1936, it was only after the defeat of his third party in
that year that he began to use anti-Semitism as a political
weapon. In 1938 he announced that henceforth the Chris-
tian Front would “not fear to be called anti-semitic.” As
the owner of one of the largest libraries of anti-Semitic
materials in this country, Coughlin quickly demonstrated
that he could work artful variations on the stock themes.
In reprinting the Protocols, he pointed out that the authen-
ticity of the document was, in his opinion, an immaterial
issue; what mattered was its “prophetic nature.” On No-
vember 30, 1938, Coughlin made an anti-Semitic broadcast
on a nationwide radio network. With an estimated radio
listening audience of 3,500,000 people, no one could dis-
miss this sort of propaganda as insignificant. While mount-
ing public pressure finally forced Coughlin off the air, the
mystery of his finances has never been solved. This same
question becomes of paramount interest in connection with
the activities of William Dudley Pelley. In a period of
nineteen months prior to July 31, 1938, Pelley mailed ap-
proximately three and a half tons of anti-Semitic propa-
ganda from his headquarters. That large subsidies were in-
volved, in both cases, can hardly be doubted. 2 ®

It is also important to note that, during the late thirties,
some respectable newspapers began to dabble in a type of
journalism which proved most embarrassing to the Jews.

From Little Acorns 45

On December 15, 1938, the New York Daily News re-
printed a scurrilous pamphlet by W illiam Dudley Pelley,
devoting one half of its second page and pages 4 and 38
in their entirety to a digest of the pamphlet. When a young
man named David Ginsburg was reported to have secured a
commission in the army on being dropped by the OP A, the
Daily News, ably seconded by the Hearst press, attempted
to make a nationwide scandal of the incident and injected
the most unmistakable anti-Semitic slant into the story by
linking the name of Ginsburg with that of Justice Felix
Frankfurter. During the 1944 campaign, the Daily News
launched the attack on Sidney Hillman with a story call-
ing attention to his “rabbinical education.” In a series of
columns, John O’Donnell kept needling the administra-
tion with charges, veiled and direct, of “Jewish influences,”
culminating in his false and malicious charge that General
George S. Patton had been removed from his command
because he had slapped “a Jewish soldier.” Generally speak-
ing, the entire nationalist press cultivated the theme that
the Jews were driving America into the war. In a remark-
able editorial of December 16, 1938, the Daily News said
that the Bill of Rights means only “that our government
shall not officially discriminate against any religion. It does
not mean that Americans are forbidden to dislike other
Americans or religions or any other group. Plenty of people
just now are exercising their right to dislike the Jews.”

Perhaps the real peak of the anti-Semitic campaign that
began in the thirties was reached on September 11 , 1941,
when Charles Lindbergh, speaking in Des Moines to an
audience of 7500 people, charged that the Jews were seek-
ing to force America into the war, and, in a most sinister

4 6 A Mask for Privilege

phrase, warned them of the consequences. Even prior to
this speech, substantially the same charge had been made
by Senator Burton Wheeler in a speech in the Senate on
February 28, 1941, and by Congressman John Rankin, who
told his colleagues that “Wall Street and a little group of
our international Jewish brethren are still attempting to
harass the President and Congress into plunging us into the
European War.” 24

Two recent surveys describe, with considerable accu-
racy, the present status of anti-Semitism in the United
States. In general both surveys agree that anti-Semitic
sentiment has not receded below the levels of 1944-1945.
Discrimination in employment has increased; restrictions
against Jews at resorts and in real estate developments have
continued at a high level; heavy enrollment in colleges has
“accentuated the degree of discrimination at colleges and
universities”; and there is evidence that the practice of
exclusion in some areas has appeared to spill “over into
civic, business, and political circles, discoloring the pat-
tern of American community life.” Both reports agree
that, while organized agitation has abated, prejudice on an
individual basis has become more widespread and more in-
tense. That the organized efforts have been less successful
than might have been expected is attributed to the contin-
ued high level of employment and to “a greater resistance
by potential recruits and positive counteraction by an in-
formed public.” In the South, one of the reports notes,
“anti-semitism . . . continued unabated during 1946.” Ac-
curate as I believe these reports to be, it is apparent that the
current situation is far from encouraging. The increase

From Little Acorns

47

noted in what is termed “individual anti-Semitism” — that
is, unorganized anti-Semitism — is perhaps the surest indi-
cation that, in a period of general unemployment, a re-
sumption of organized anti-Semitism on a large scale is to
be anticipated. 25 |

The emergence of political anti-Semitism in American
life is a matter of profound importance. Political anti-Semi-
tism can never be projected in a social and cultural vacuum.
It is a growth; not an invention. Political anti-Semitism
must always be based on such pre-existing factors as social
cleavage, a fairly well-developed anti-Semitic ideology, and
a pattern of social and economic discrimination. When
William Dudley Pelley issued his “New Emancipation
Proclamation” on September 5, 1934, he promised “to im-
pose racial quotas on the political and economic structure,
observing rigorously in effect that no racial factions shall
be allowed further occupancy of public or professional
office in excess of the ratio of its blood-members to the
remaining sum total of all races completing the composition
of the body politic.” Stripped of its verbiage, this statement
reflected an existing social and economic reality. By 1934
racial and religious quotas were embedded in the structure
of a large number of American institutions, educational,
financial, social, and industrial.

It is, indeed, a long path that leads from the Grand Union
Hotel incident of 1877 to the manifestations of organized
political anti-Semitism that developed in the thirties; but
for all its twists and turns, the path is clearly marked. Each
phase of anti-Semitism has developed logically out of the
phase or phases which preceded it and has paralleled changes
in the economy. One can see the broad outline of a pattern
in this progression: first social discrimination, then increas-

48 A Mask for Privilege

mg economic discrimination, and, finally, overt organized
political anti-Semitism. The mote in our eye has always con-
sisted in the firm belief that anti-Semitism could not take
root in the United States. But viewing the record in retro-
spect, one cannot escape the conclusion that anti-Semitism
now has fairly deep roots in American life and that it has
been assuming increasingly more significant forms of ex-
pression over a period of many years.

One reason why this emerging pattern has not been more
widely noted is that anti-Semitism in America differs from
the so-called “classical” European variety in this major re-
spect: that here, as will be shown later, the main limi tations
imposed on Jews have been imposed by our “private gov-
ernments” — industry and trade, banks and insurance com-
panies, real estate boards and neighborhood associations,
clubs and societies, colleges and universities. “In Czarist
Russia,” as the late Alexander H. Pekelis pointed out in an
unpublished manuscript, “it was the Ministry of Education
and the Ministry of Justice that put a ceiling on the number
of Jews to be registered in schools of medicine. ... In the
United States these ceilings are imposed by our ‘private’
medical schools. . . . Anti-Semitism here is private or com-
munal, not public or governmental in nature.” It is precisely
for this reason that anti-Semitism has now entered upon a
critical phase in this country, for nongovernmental re-
straints by “private governments” have become of increasing
importance as we have moved into the pattern and mold of
a closed society. Looking for governmental anti-Se m itism,
in the European tradition, we have failed to observe the
peculiarity of the American pattern.

CHAPTER III

The Snakes of

Ireland

One of the most puzzling aspects of the growth of anti-
Semitism in the United States has always consisted in the
difficulty of locating, or isolating, the tradition which has
sanctioned its use. For, on first thought, it is precisely this
tradition that seems to be lacking. Hugo Valentin was
merely one of many investigators to emphasize the absence
in America of “the anti-semitic tradition which in so many
countries of Europe furnishes the most favourable ante-
cedent for a revival of anti-semitdsm.” On the other hand,
Horace M. Kallen, who regards the Christian tradition as
virtually synonymous with the tradition of anti-Semitism,
has explained anti-Semitism in the United States by ref-
erence to Christian influences in the culture. But so little
religious hostility, as such, has been shown toward Jews in
America that it is difficult to believe that the Christian tra-
dition has been a dominant or decisive factor. Still other
observers, such as Lewis S. Gannett, have suggested that
anti-Semitism in the United States is “essentially a part of
a long Anglo-Saxon tradition of dislike of the newer ar-
rival .” 1 There is no evidence, however, that such a dis-
like, if it exists, can be correlated with the actual arrival
of new immigrant groups. The fact is that we have two

5°

A Mask for Privilege

conflicting traditions in the United States, one sharply
opposed to and the other sanctioning anti-Semitism; the one
classical, the other modem; the one based on the Revolution
of 1776, the other a rationalization of the undemocratic
social order that came into being with the rise of industrial
capitalism in the latter part of the last century.

1. THE CLASSIC TRADITION
America is the last country in the world where one would
look for anti-semitism.

— RABBI LEE J. LEVINGER

“Free America,” wrote Hugo Valentin, “was the first
modern state which, relying on the idea of religious lib-
erty, made no legal difference between Christian and Jew.
To this extent, the Declaration of Independence marks the
beginnings of Jewish Emancipation.” It was in America,
not in Europe, that the Jews were first emancipated. When
emancipation finally came in Europe, it was more rhetorical
than real: the old heritage could not be banished by a mere
verbal declaration of the rights of man, for it existed in
Europe not as a vague memory of things passed, but as an
ever-living force in society. In the United States, emanci-
pation was complete in the sense that, the medieval heritage
never having existed, formal emancipation meant precisely
what it was intended to mean in Europe: that theological
differences would never be permitted to form the basis for
secular sanctions and discriminations. When the men who
wrote the Constitution provided that “Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion or pro-

The Snakes of Ireland 51

hibiting the free exercise thereof,” they merely declared
an existing state of affairs. “It is only in the North Ameri-
can Free States,” wrote Karl Marx in 1844, “that the Jew-
ish question loses its theological significance and becomes
a really secular question. In the United States there is
neither a state religion nor a religion declared to be that
of the majority, nor the predominance of one cult over
another. The state is alien to all cults.” While the United
States has of late years departed from this rock-bottom
separation of church and state — recently President Truman
in a letter to the Pope stated that this was a Christian na-
tion — the separation was real at the outset. “The govern-
ment of the United States,” wrote George Washington, “is
in no sense founded on the Christian religion. The United
States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish
or a Mohammedan nation.” Article XI of the treaty which
the United States concluded with Tripoli in 1796 clearly
stated that the United States “is not in any sense founded on
the Christian religion.”

The political institutions of the United States have al-
ways been free of the taint of anti-Semitism. “Upon this
soil,” writes Ludwig Lewisohn, “no Jewish blood has
flowed; in these cities no ghettos have stood nor have
their market-places known the crackle of faggots or the
despairing cry of Israel. Here alone citizenship was won
without humiliating delay and tedious struggle.” Modify
Lewisohn’s rhetoric as you will, the fact remains that
America provided the first fair test in history for the
proposition that a Jewish minority could flourish in a non-
Jewish society without humiliating governmental disabilities
and discriminations.

52 A Mask for Privilege

To be sure a few miscellaneous disabilities existed in
some of the colonies prior to 1776 and survived, in one form
or another, for some years after the Revolution. But it
would be misreading history to assume that these disabili-
ties arose out of intergroup conflicts or that they were de-
manded by the majority. On the contrary, they were
mimetic in character and found expression, as obsolete
verbiage often finds expression in documents drafted by
lawyers. Most of the colonial disabilities had been removed
prior to the Revolution, not as a concession to a minority
but as a matter of right. No amount of historical quibbling
can impugn the great historic fact that the United States
is the one nation in the Western World that, from its in-
ception, has been without the heritage of the yellow badge.
That a Dutch colonial governor once attempted to drive
a few Jews from New Amsterdam does not, in any man-
ner, alter the significance of this fact. A study of American
political institutions, therefore, would lead one to the con-
clusion, once expressed by Bernard Drachman, that “anti-
semitism in America should be like the snakes of Ireland:
there shouldn’t be any” — not, that is, if one looks at the
official record.

A glance at the impressive evidence assembled by Cyrus
Adler and Aaron M. Margalith in their study of American
diplomatic action affecting Jews in the period from 1840
to 1945 (With Firmness in the Right ) is sufficient to indi-
cate that our official attitude toward anti-Semitism has al-
ways been a good one, notable for its consistency, firmness,
and insistence on human rights. In fact, it is doubtful if any
element in our tradition has done us greater credit as a peo-
ple than has this policy toward Jewish persecution.

The Snakes of Ireland 53

The first representation made by the United States to
any foreign power relating to the Jews was embodied in
a note of protest dispatched in connection with the Damas-
cus ritual murder case of 1840. Throughout the nineteenth
century, the United States repeatedly lodged protests
against the persecution of the Jews in Russia, Rumania,
Poland, Austria, Persia, Morocco, and Turkey. It was the
persistent intervention of the American minister, in the
years from 1853 to 1861, that finally won freedom from
discrimination for the Swiss Jews. When Austria refused
to accept the credentials of Anthony M. Keiley as ambas-
sador, because his wife was Jewish and therefore “could
not be accorded that reception by Vienna society which
we judge desirable for the representative of the United
States,” President Cleveland refused to withdraw the ap-
pointment and left the post vacant for two years.

As early as March 5, 1891, a petition was presented to
President Harrison, signed by a group of distinguished non-
Jews, asking that an international conference be called “to
consider the conditions of the Israelites and their claims to
Palestine as their ancient home, and to promote, in all other
just and proper ways, the alleviation of their suffering.” In
a famous note to our ambassador in Rumania in 1902, John
Hay laid down a basic tenet of American foreign policy
when he wrote:

This government can lose no opportunity to controvert such
a distinction (between Jewish and non-Jewish American citi-
zens), wherever it may appear. It can admit no such discrimi-
nation among its own citizens, and can never assent that a
foreign state, of its own volition, can apply a religious test
to debar any American citizens from the favor due to all.

54 A Mask for Privilege

Developed in the course of a long diplomatic controversy
with Czarist Russia, extending from 1873 to 1911, our in-
sistence upon this principle finally culminated in the termi-
nation of our commercial treaty with Russia.

Throughout the years, America’s policy toward Jewish
persecution has found warm support in American public
opinion. “In the name of civilization,” reads a resolution
adopted at a great mass meeting held in Chickering Hall
in New York on February 2, 1882, “we protest the spirit
of medieval persecution. In this age of recognized equality
of all men, irrespective of their religious confession, an
essential element in American constitutions is a principle
and practice which secure the loyal devotion of all classes,
the principle of religious liberty.” When a series of fright-
ful pogroms was launched in Russia in 1903 — the fateful
year of Kishineff — over seventy large protest meetings were
held in the United States; in fact, the world-wide protest
which these pogroms aroused centered in the United States
and was initiated here. “A whole nation,” in Lewisohn’s
phrase, “embraced the distress of Israel as though that dis-
tress were its own, and the chief magistrate of the Republic
caused the record of that sympathy to be embodied in the
archives of the nation.”

America’s loyal adherence to what Theodore Roosevelt
once called “the diplomacy of humanity” not only encour-
aged European Jews to continue their fight for freedom and
survival, but was an important factor in stimulating large-
scale Jewish immigration. Every Jew that came to the
United States from Poland, Russia, or Rumania strength-
ened the chances of Jewish survival and, at the same
time, added to the security of American Jewry which in

The Snakes of Ireland 55

turn gave new hope to Jews throughout the world. Beyond
all question, the favorable experiences of Jews in America
exerted a profound influence on Jewish morale everywhere.
Over a long period of years, the hope for an eventual
Jewish homeland in Palestine received indispensable sup-
port from American Jews and official encouragement from
the American government.

While the Jewish experiment in America has not been
concluded, by any means, it has afforded the most satisfac-
tory adjustment yet achieved in a long history of similar
experiments. For here the circumstances have been and still
remain unique. “Here,” as James Parkes has written, “the
old battle of assimilation and nationalism is being fought out
within a new framework. European Jewry was asked in the
Nineteenth Century to assimilate to an already existing non-
Jewish culture and way of life, and the assimilation was
primarily that of surrendering what was characteristically
Jewish and accepting what was characteristically non-
Jewish, even Christian. The position in America is differ-
ent; for the whole continent is simultaneously assimilating
the significance of its own existence, and the task to which
Jews are called within that assimilation can be creation
rather than renunciation; for one of the things to be assimi-
lated in a new tolerance and equality is the variety of
national traditions of which the continent is the repository
and the expression .” 2

While our official record toward anti-Semitism at home
and abroad has been a good one, and has created an excep-
tionally favorable environment for Jews, the unofficial rec-
ord is another matter. Scrutinizing the official record one
would dismiss, as most unlikely, the possibility of anti-

56 A Mask for Privilege

Semitism ever reaching alarming proportions in this coun-
try. Unfortunately, however, we have long tolerated the
growth of a set of undemocratic practices in sharp conflict
with our democratic tradition. To seek out the tradition
that sanctions the “private and communal” variety of anti-
Semitism in America, therefore, one must turn from the of-
ficial record to the unofficial; from the real tradition to its
mythical counterpart. How was the dualism in federal pol-
icy toward racial minorities, which came into such sharp
focus after the Civil War, rationalized? What factors made
this rationalization seem plausible? Who were the myth-
makers?

2. THE MYTH-MAKERS

In the period after the Civil War, the American people
began to be concerned, as Matthew Josephson has noted,
over the difference between what men said and what they
meant in politics; between the eternal principles which they
voiced and the incidental objectives which these principles
served to mask; with the contradiction, in short, between
ideology and interest. To rationalize the glaring discrepancy
between what was happening in American life and the tra-
ditional American ideals, a myth had to be created. In the
creation of a myth, certain basic essentials are required. A
myth cannot be spun out of whole cloth; it must relate to
an objective set of facts, a complex of events which has
brought about the need for rationalization. Successful myth-
making also requires a background that can be manipulated.
The myth must have the appearance of reviving an older
story and must appeal to some antecedent set of values.

The Snakes of Ireland 5 7

To create a myth, various types of verbal skills are re-
quired. At the grass-roots level, there must be certain vul-
garians who can hammer away at the agreed-upon themes.
These are the active Klansmen — the window smashers, the
lynchers, the authors and circulators of scurrilous tracts
and anonymous pamphlets, the unskilled craftsmen. But a
myth can never be traced to its source or understood by
studying the ideological antics of these elements. For they
lack the learning and intelligence, the prestige and position,
to launch a myth. The real myth-makers are always of a
different stripe. They come from different backgrounds —
occupy different positions in society, speak a different lan-
guage, and have a different status. Hitler was preceded
in Germany by a number of these refined upper-class
racial theorists and myth-makers, just as Gerald L. K.
Smith did not invent the ideology that he manipulates
today.

Three names figure prominently in the architecture of
the Great Myth in America: Madison Grant, Burton J.
Hendrick, and Lothrop Stoddard. Grant was bom in New
York in 1865; Hendrick in Connecticut in 1871; Stoddard
in Massachusetts in 1883 — all native bom of native bom
parents. From the meager data in Who’s Who, one can
identify their backgrounds as old-stock New England,
Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Upper Class. Grant was a grad-
uate of Yale and Columbia; Hendrick of Yale; Stoddard of
Harvard. Long ardent students of eugenics, Grant and
Stoddard were both trained in the law. It would also appear
that the three men, at different times, were members of the
same clubs. Judging by the extraordinary number of his
club affiliations and the circumstance that he was a bach-

58 A Mask for Privilege

elor, Grant must have been a very lonely man. An active
member of the Society of Colonial Wars and the Loyal
Legion, he was also a member of the Tuxedo, Union,
Knickerbocker, University, Century, Down Town, Turf
and Field, Boone and Crockett, Half Moon, Ends of the
Earth, and Shikar clubs.

Madison Grant — explorer, adventurer, amateur scientist,
lawyer, and publicist — was Houston Stewart Chamber-
lain’s most influential disciple in this country. In 1916 Grant
published The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial
Basis of European History, which was largely based on
Chamberlain’s romantic notions. Although the intellectual
parentage is clearly apparent, Grant did not cite Chamber-
lain nor did he list The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century in the pretentious bibliography to be found in the
fourth revised edition of his book issued in 1921. Chamber-
lain’s racist primer, first issued in 1899, had sold 100,000
copies by 1914 and had gone through printing after print-
ing. The Grant book was hardly less successful: it was
reprinted twice in 1916; a second edition was reprinted in
1918 and in 1919; a third revised edition was reprinted in
1921; and the fourth, and final, edition was issued in 1924,
with an introduction by Henry Fairfield Osborn. The bible
of the Nordics, the book had an enormous influence. Grant
contended, and not without reason, that its publication was
largely responsible for the passage of the Immigration Act
of 1924.

The Passing of the Great Race contains the frankest
and the most clear-cut statement of the racist ideology
ever published in this country. Premised upon the assump-
tion that race is the prime determinant of history, it pro-
ceeds to “demonstrate” that racial lines correspond with

The Snakes of Ireland 59

class and social cleavages. Since racial lines obviously cut
across nationality and linguistic groups and never corre-
spond exactly with class cleavages, it is apparent that Grant
was using the racial theory to rationalize an antidemocratic
position. This is apparent, also, in the hatred that he spewed
upon the democratic ideal “and its illegitimate offspring
socialism.” Throughout the book one finds “races” and
“classes” being used interchangeably, there being superior
and inferior classes just as there are superior and inferior
races. It was Grant’s hatred of democracy that explained
his hatred of “inferior peoples”; nor could he be accused
of mincing words. Either we abandoned, he wrote, the
boast that America recognizes no distinctions in “race,
creed, or color,” or we were doomed as a nation.

Later Grant applied the racial interpretation of history
to the American scene in The Conquest of a Continent or
the Expansion of Races in America (1923). The book is a
clever piece of myth-making, for it did investigate, as I will
show later, a real situation. Up to the Civil War, Grant
wrote, the United States had succeeded in preserving its
religious, racial, and political unity. But the Civil War had
destroyed this unity. As he viewed the war, it had been
fought on both sides “almost entirely by unalloyed native
Americans.” It was our native aristocracy, the flower of
American manhood, that had been slaughtered on the
battlefields of the Civil War. To fill the void created by
this slaughter, millions of immigrants had been brought to
our shores. Together with the emancipated slaves, these im-
migrants were in process of destroying our racial, linguistic,
cultural, religious, and national unity. Unrestricted immi-
gration had resulted in a lowering of the birth rate among
the native stock and in a rapid deterioration of their eco-

6o

A Mask, for Privilege

nomic position, for the natives were “too proud” to mingle
with the motley immigrant hordes.

Among the various immigrant types, Grant had a special
disdain for “the Polish Jew . . . with his dwarf stature,
pec uliar mentality and ruthless concentration on self-
interest.” As for the Negroes, they had to be rigidly
segregated from the mass of the population and denied full
citizenship. Unfortunately the “farming and artisan classes
of America” had not awakened to the changes taking place
in this country until it was too late; and now they were
threatened with extermination. That “inferior people” could
successfully compete with “superior people” was an incon-
sistency that did not bother Grant. One would think that
a racist like Grant would favor intermarriage between
“superior” and “inferior” types in the hope of improving
the stock. But it seems that “a law” precluded this possi-
bility: the law that the mongrel offspring of such mar-
riages reverted to the inferior caste. Thus Grant wrote that
“a cross between any of the three European races and a
Jew is a Jew.” Slavery had preserved the white man’s vigor,
but now this lord of the earth was being compelled to work
and his powers were waning. America had reached the
zenith of its powers in 1860 and the future for Grant was
enshrouded in a deep Spenglerian gloom. It should not be
forgotten that the spread of industrial civilization in Ger-
many produced similar rationalizations there.

3. THE MYTH OF UNDESIRABILITY
One can trace this same myth-making process in an ex-
tremely influential book by Burton J. Hendrick published

The Snakes of Ireland 6 1

in 1923 — The Jews in America. Although the jacket car-
ried such provocative questions as “Do Jews Make Good
Americans?” and “Is There a Menace in the Polish Jew?”
the tone of the book is polite, scholarly, and well-mannered.
Anti-Semitic violence is consistently deplored and it appears
to be fair throughout.

Hendrick has kind words for “the first Jews” who came
to America. The Sephardic Jews had a delicacy which was
“decidedly non-Jewish.” Not theirs “the thick lips, the
curly hair, the swarthy complexion, the hooked nose, or
the round heads” which are “generally regarded as Jewish
characteristics.” The Sephardic Jews were “superior to
other representatives of Israel” — a polite concession to
Benjamin Cardozo and Bernard Baruch. Toward the Ger-
man Jews, the tone is still polite but one detects a certain
edge. It seems that the German Jews included too many
of those “characteristically Jewish figures — the rag picker,
the petty tradesman, the pawnbroker.” But, since it would
never do to say that Oscar S. Straus, Solomon Loeb, and
Benjamin Altman were “undesirable,” the German Jews
were also excepted from the category. Now and then a few
German Jews were even elected “to one of the most exclu-
sive city clubs, — although here, it must be admitted, prog-
ress is more difficult.” The Sephardic Jews had a large
admixture of Spanish blood and there was much good
German blood in the German Jews; but with the appear-
ance of the Polish Jews with “long, unkempt beards, the
trailing hair, and the little curls about the ears,” the whole
situation had changed most deplorably.

After this introductory flourish, the distinction so care-
fully preserved between Sephardic and German Jews, on

6 2 A Mask for Privilege

the one hand, and Polish jews on the other suddenly
vanishes and the author describes Jews in general. The trad-
ing instinct with Jews “is inherent in the very germ-plasm
of the race.” While Jews are talented, their talents are es-
sentially imitative. “They can develop the ideas and prin-
ciples of others; but the mighty gift of creation they possess
only in a moderate degree.” Not superior to Gentiles in any
sense, they are “quick, nimble, and talented.” Far from
dominating American finance and industry, Hendrick con-
cluded that Jews were biologically incapable of creating or
of operating large enterprises. For the nature of the control
of Am erican business and finance compelled him to take
notice of the fact that “the racial stocks which founded the
United States . . . still control its wealth.” Having made
these observations, Hendrick then drew the conclusion
that further Russian- Jewish and Polish-Jewish immigration
should be barred. One year after the book was published,
his wish was granted. Contrary to his predictions, however,
anti-Semitism did not abate but reached new depths of
intensity and rancor fifteen years after the great wall was
erected!

Today it is quite apparent that this picture of the Polish
Jew merely reflected the general tendency to rationalize
economic and social conflicts as cultural or racial conflicts.
For had the myth-makers been guided by objective criteria,
they could hardly have imagined a more desirable immi-
grant than the Russian Jew. Haunted by memories of po-
groms in Europe, he came to this country with the fixed
intention of permanent residence and with the minimum
in the way of nationalistic European loyalties. With the
possible exception of the Irish, the East European Jews

The Snakes of Ireland 63

showed the least inclination of all immigrant groups to
return to Europe. They brought their families with them;
they were slightly more literate than the average immi-
grants of the period; and they were an urbanized people
possessed of many important skills and talents. Neverthe-
less, a clever rationalization placed them in the “undesirable”
category from which the German Jews, who had already
achieved status, were neatly excepted.

4. 1000 HARVARD GRADUATES

The career of Dr. Lothrop Stoddard presents an inter-
esting case history of the how and why of racial myth-
making. His book The Revolt against Civilization (subtitled
The Menace of the Under Man ) went through six editions
after publication in 1922, while an earlier volume, The
Rising Tide of Color (1920), went through fourteen edi-
tions and created, according to Dr. Louis L. Snyder, “an
international sensation.” Stoddard starts, like Grant, with
the assumption that the rise and fall of civilization is to be
explained in terms of changes in the human stock. For a
civilization to arise at all, a superior human stock must first
have been evolved. The barbarian stocks are a menace to
civilization since they upset living standards, socially ster-
ilize the higher stocks, and mongrelize the population
through interbreeding. In fact, these inferior elements, “in-
cluding many of the peoples of Asia, the American Indians,
and the African Negroes,” are the conscious enemies of
mankind: they are the Under Men.

From his adventures in the field of eugenics, Dr. Stod-
dard had discovered four elements in the American stock:

64 A Mask for Privilege

the old Native American stock — the best; the earlier im-
migrant stock — “somewhat less superior”; the new immi-
grants — “decidedly inferior”; and the Negroes — “inferior
to all other elements.” In America, as elsewhere, civilization
was threatened not by social causes, but by the encroach-
ment of the Under Men. Thus the crisis of our time is racial,
not social, in character. Starting from a theoretical discus-
sion of the ebb and flow of civilization, one notices that the
argument has now become emphatically antidemocratic
in tone and content. This becomes quite apparent in Stod-
dard’s characterization of the Russian Revolution as “a
savage upsurge of revolutionary atavism,” essentially racial
in origin.

Dr. Stoddard was acutely distressed by a study which
had been made by the biologist Davenport. This study con-
cluded that, at existing rates of reproduction, 1000 Harvard
graduates of 1923 would have only 50 descendants two
centuries hence; while 1000 Rumanians in Boston, at their
rate of reproduction, would have 100,000 descendants in
the same space of time. One can naturally appreciate the
consternation that this equation must have caused a devoted
Harvard man. But only the existence of an acute xeno-
phobia can explain the remarkable fact that Dr. Stoddard
was apparently willing to assume that none of the 100,000
descendants of the 1000 Rumanian immigrants would ever
graduate from Harvard College and thus add to the number
of Harvard men. Since he had already consigned the Ru-
manian immigrants to the category of the Under Men who
could never meet the educational standards of Harvard,
Dr. Stoddard was, in effect, compelled to make this assump-
tion. Merely as an aside, one notes the appearance in the

The Snakes of Ireland 6 5

line-up of the 1946 Harvard football team of players with
such names as Drvaric, Fiorentino, Feinberg, Gudaitis,
Moravec, and Lazzaro.

"What also acutely distressed Dr. Stoddard was his con-
clusion that the middle class was being made to assume a
disproportionate social burden: the burden of being taxed
for the relief of the poor; of having to do all the brainwork
for the Under Men; and of having to educate their own
children as well as the children of the less fortunate. It
seems, also, that Jews are part of the burden that the middle
class must carry. Jews were not a menace until about 1848.
But once released from the ghetto, the Jew had joined the
vanguard of the revolutionary movement. The Jew is a
dangerous leader of the Under Men since he has few na-
tional loyalties and possesses “a quick, clever intelligence.”

Having defined “the cause of the world unrest” in racial
terms, it only remained for Dr. Stoddard to prescribe the
remedy: eugenics or the science of race betterment. The
eugenics doctrine, as developed by Stoddard, is certainly
not a socially neutral doctrine. Not only does it shift the
scrutiny of causes from the social to the racial, but it leads
to such notions as that poor relief should carry with it the
obligation of sterilization. Race building is coupled with
“race cleansing” and race cleansing implies the planned
elimination of the unfit. If social unrest is caused by “tainted
geniuses” and “degenerates,” the elimination of these types
will eliminate the sources of unrest. The goal of such a
program is the evolution of a “neo-aristocracy,” for democ-
racy “as a fetich has no more virtues than Mumbo-Jumbo
or a West African ju-ju.”

In 1939 Dr. Stoddard visited Nazi Germany as a corre-

66 A Mask for Privilege

spondent and wrote a book about his visit — Into the Dark-
ness, 1940. On this visit, he had the good fortune to study
eugenics in application; in fact, he was invited to sit with
a three-man Nazi court for a day, listening to the appeals
of individuals whom the Nazis had ordered sterilized.
Despite all that had been written between 1922 and 1939
to clarify the racial issue, Stoddard describes the eugenics
court with admiration.

In a number of respects, the myth-making of Grant and
Stoddard carries the same burden of argument. What is of
special significance is the manner in which Grant and Stod-
dard equate the colonial issue with the unrest among the
Under Men in America. Nothing illustrates the danger of
racism more clearly than the manner in which, once assump-
tions of racial superiority are granted, a psychosis of fear
immediately arises. To Grant and Stoddard the appearance
of Oriental immigrants on the West Coast was alarming in
the same sense, and for the same reason, that social unrest
in C hina and India was alarming. Although insisting that the
cause of social unrest is racial, the writings of Grant and
Stoddard fairly quiver with hatred of social change. What
was it that they really feared — the encroachment of “in-
ferior” races or a threatened loss in social status? While
Grant and Stoddard showed a consistent preoccupation
with racial theory, Hendrick falls in a quite different cate-
gory. In view of his fine historical writings and the generous
spirit they reflect, it is apparent that the book he wrote
about the Jews was a journalistic undertaking which he
would almost certainly repudiate today. I have mentioned
the work of these myth-makers, not for the purpose of
exploding their racial theories (the theories were exploded

The Snakes of Ireland 67

years ago), but to trace the development of an ideology
and to show how this ideology rationalized the socio-
economic conflicts of the period and served as a mask for
privilege.

5. THE BUFFALO AND THE ANGLO-SAXON

The great myth was not, however, the creation of three
men. Contributions to its creation came, in fact, from many
diverse sources. In a brilliant article in the Political Science
Quarterly , 3 Dr. Edward Norman Saveth has traced the
process by which an authoritarian bias colored the teaching
of American history in the period between the Civil War
and the turn of the century. A generation of American his-
torians and political scientists, many of whom were trained
in German universities, made a point of teaching that our
political institutions had their origin, not in the Revolution
of 1776 , but in the dark huts of Teutonic villages. Herbert
Baxter Adams, John W. Burgess, Hermann von Holst,
James Schouler, and James Ford Rhodes were all impressed,
in varying degrees, with the difference in political capacity
between races* The notion that the native American stock
was being pressed to the wall by hordes of European immi-
grants was a favorite theme of Dr. Edward A. Ross and
other American sociologists of the period. “Is it any won-
der,” asked Dr. William Z. Ripley, “that serious students
contemplate the racial future of Anglo-Saxon America with
some concern? They have seen the passing of the American
Indian and the Buffalo; and now they query as to how long
the Anglo-Saxon may be able to survive.” 5

John E. Edgerton, at one time president of the National

68 A Mask for Privilege

Association of Manufacturers, joined the chorus with a solo
part in which he insisted that most manufacturers were of
“native American stock” and that they were “a native, loyal,
and God-fearing” lot. He was particularly annoyed with
the Jews for their arrogant refusal to observe the Christian
Sabbath. Dr. Charles Conant Josey, formerly of Dartmouth
College, was sure that the white race “possessed certain in-
nate superiorities”; that the belief in white supremacy made
for “new supplies of psychic force”; and that “the maximum
good of the world lies in the continued prosperity of the
white race.” 6 Dr. David Starr Jordan, who had given utter-
ance on more than one occasion to thinly veiled anti-
Semitic sentiments, 7 told a Congressional committee that
“it is a plain fact that our population has been diluted to
an alarming extent by the incoming of peoples which are
biologically incapable of rising either now or through their
descendants above the mentality of a 12-year-old child.
Education and Americanization may help the individual a
little, but never the stock.” This from a liberal educator,
the president of Leland Stanford University. 8

While this great myth was shot through and through
with transparent fallacies and was essentially a rationaliza-
tion of the socio-economic conflicts that came with an
industrial society, it did square in a superficial way with
certain social realities. The post-Civil-War years were
unquestionably chaotic and corrupt, violent and riotous.
Evil did sit in high places; foreigners were inundating the
American landscape; the fabric of the older democratic
culture was being ripped apart. To trick a freedom-loving

The Snakes of Ireland 69

people into accepting industrial regimentation in the name
of democracy, the tycoons of the period needed a diver-
sionary issue. Hence the alien, the foreigner, the Jew, the
Negro, and the yellow peril. In a sense the stratification of
the American people into functional groups based upon
ethnic status had been consciously planned. James J. Hill
brought over the Irish to build the railroad lines; the Ger-
mans and Scandinavians to run the shops and to operate the
farms; the Croatians, the Slavs, the Lithuanians, and the
Finns to work the mines on the Mesabi. Of Protestant
background but married to a Catholic, he shrewdly ap-
praised the importance of religious backgrounds in the
selection of immigrants. “Look at the millions of foreigners
pouring into this country,” he once said. “The Catholic
Church represents the only power that they either fear or
respect. What will be their social views, their political
action, if that single force should be removed?”

On the face of things, the Anglo-Saxons were the most
successful group (hence, by implication, a superior group).
Humorless scholars examined Who’s Who gathering sta-
tistics to prove that a correlation existed between men of
eminence and Anglo-Saxon, white, Protestant backgrounds
and, of course, they found what they were loo king for.
This apotheosis of the Anglo-Saxon was naturally gratify-
ing to those of Anglo-Saxon background, particularly those
who were being sorely pressed economically by Big Busi-
ness (which was controlled by other Anglo-Saxons) . The
great myth also appealed to a strain of old-fashioned Roman
Republicanism in our tradition. “The Republic was being
threatened.” Taste was being debauched. Morals were b eing
undermined. Standards were being destroyed. Many Ameri-

70 A Mask for Privilege

cans of the period began to be nostalgic, to look back upon
the first years of the Republic with misty eyes. Their great
emotional attachment to the traditional values upon which
American culture had been predicated was itself a powerful
dynamic to be manipulated. These various tendencies should
be correlated, also, with similar tendencies in Europe, after
1848, to explain social phenomena in terms of race. Had
not the great Ernest Renan written that “divers races lead
downward to a common estate of moral putrefaction”?

Under the impact of the new forces which the second
American Revolution had released, the contradiction be-
tween ideology and interest was finally resolved, for many
elements, by the substitution of a new ideology, or counter-
tradition. Essentially this is what Henry Adams meant
when he said that the society of post bellum America had
swept into the ash heap the cinders of his misdirected educa-
tion. Although he regarded the new dispensation as inevi-
table, he could not accept it because he was too deeply
immersed in the older democratic culture. He was, indeed,
“landed, lost, and forgotten,” as were many of his con-
temporaries.

When a Westbrook Pegler, therefore, refers to “that
vicious and hateful word democracy”; when he charges
that under certain circumstances bigotry and intolerance
are not un-American; when he states that no correlation
can be made between fascism and the K.K.K. (because
the Klan is a good old-fashioned American institution);
and when he defends lynching, as he did at the time of the
San Jose lynching in California, he is doing so in terms of
this bogus countertradition in American life.

The Snakes of Ireland

* 7 1

6. “ PATHETIC PILGRIMS TO FORGOTTEN SHRINES ’ ’

Growing up in the Old South in the 1890’s, the German-
bom son of German-Jewish parents, it seemed that the
“Americanization” of Ludwig Lewisohn was complete and
final. Apart from appearance there was nothing Jewish
about him: he was a Southerner, a Methodist, and a member
in good standing of the Epworth League. Unaware of the
existence of anti-Semitism, he was profoundly shocked
when, upon his graduation from Columbia University in
1902, he was refused a teaching position. When a “kindly”
instructor informed him that an academic career was most
unlikely, in view of his being a Jew, he suddenly realized
that “only faint remnants of the ideals of the early Republic
still lingered in American life.”

For a time it seemed to Lewisohn as though “the evil
unveracity of early influences” had crippled his soul. He
had grown to maturity in a society in which it was gen-
erally agreed that “there was no anti-Semitism in America”;
in fact, it was un-American to assert the contrary. Wher-
ever he went in search of a teaching position, however,
Lewisohn found the same strange “duality of conscience.”
The men who refused him positions were “Anglo-Ameri-
cans, pillars of democracy, proclaimers of its mission to set
the bond free and equalize fife’s opportunities for man-
kind.” Firmly believing that they lived in a democratic
society that provided equal opportunities for all, they were
not even aware of an inconsistency between traditional
values and contemporary practices; between the older
scheme of values and the new realities. It was Lewisohn’s

72 A Mask for Privilege

discovery that the America of the turn of the century was
a “nation of schizophrenics” that drove him to revive his
forgotten “Jewishness” and its traditional values. “Who
was he,” writes his biographer, Adolph Gillis, “to defy
the unwritten law to which professors like Brander Mat-
thews and Carpenter, the secretary of the department, gave
their allegiance, that Americans should learn the literature
of their mother tongue from Saxons like themselves?” With
understandable bitterness Lewisohn concluded that “the
notion of liberty on which the Republic was founded,
the spirit of America that animated Emerson and Whitman,
is vividly alive today only in the unassimilated foreigner,
in that pathetic pilgrim to a forgotten shrine.” 8
The disillusionment of Ludwig Lewisohn, however, was
not complete at this point. Another rude shock awaited him
when, on returning to Germany, he discovered that “the
country bore no resemblance to the one in which Lessing
and Schiller and Heine had lived.” Germany, like America,
appeared to have repudiated its classic tradition. Although
Lewisohn was painfully aware of the trauma which had
occurred in the traditions of both nations, he never suc-
ceeded in identifying its cause. “When new means of pro-
ductions are introduced in any country,” writes Franz
Hoeliering, “ ‘classical traditions’ are for the time being
pushed into the background. . . . Where is the happy
nation which is able simultaneously to absorb modern tech-
nology and to stress the values achieved during more
reflective periods?”

The Snakes of Ireland

73

7 . CHRISTMAS EVE IN LITCHFIELD

Wherever one looks in these “dark and little understood
years” after the Civil War, the same schizophrenic tend-
encies come to light. Consider, for example, one phase of
the remarkable career of John Jay Chapman (bom
March 2, 1862). On August 14, 1911, a Negro named
Ezekiel Walker killed an employee of a steel company in
Coatesville, Pennsylvania. While pursued by a lynch mob.
Walker shot himself in the mouth and was taken to a hospi-
tal. Screaming “Don’t give me a crooked death because
I’m not white,” he was later taken from the hospital, roped
to his cot, and dumped on a pile of rubbish to which a
match was touched. When the flames burned the ropes,
Walker rose from the cot and attempted to escape, only
to be hurled back into the flames.

Terribly moved by this grisly lynching, Chapman rented
a hall in Coatesville one year to the day after the incident
occurred. On this anniversary occasion, he proceeded to
deliver, to an empty hall, his magnificent Coatesville Ad-
dress, as moving, in its own way, as Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address. In the course of this short address, he said:

As I read the newspaper accounts of the scene enacted here
in Coatesville a year ago, I seemed to get a glimpse into the
unconscious soul of this country. I saw a seldom revealed
picture of the American heart and of the American nature.
I seemed to be looking into the heart of the criminal, — a cold
thing, an awful thing.

I said to myself: “I shall forget this, we shall all forget it;
but it will be there. What I have seen is not an illusion. It is
the truth. I have seen death in the heart of this people.” For

74 A Mask for Privilege

to look at the agony of a fellow-being and remain aloof means
death in the heart of the onlooker. Religious fanaticism has
sometimes lifted men to the frenzy of such cruelty, political
passion has sometimes done it, personal hatred might do it, the
excitement of the amphitheater in the degenerate days of
Roman luxury could do it. But here an audience chosen by
chance in America has stood spellbound through an im-
provised auto-da-fe, irregular, illegal, having no religious sig-
nificance, not sanctioned by custom, having no immediate
provocation, the audience standing by merely in cold dis-
like.

I saw during one moment something beyond all argument
in the depth of its significance. You might call it the paralysis
of the nerves about the heart in a people habitually and uncon-
sciously given over to selfish aims, an ignorant people who knew
not what spectacle they were providing, or what part they
were playing in a judgment-play which history was exhibit-
ing on that day.

No theories about the race problem, no statistics, legislation,
or more educational endeavor, can quite meet the lack which
that day revealed in the American people. For what we saw
was death. The people stood like blighted things, like ghosts
about Acheron, waiting for someone or something to deter-
mine their destiny for them.

Yet despite these eloquent words, and the courage which
the occasion demanded, Chapman actually shared some of
the phobias of Tom Watson. Early in his career, he had
been associated with a number of Jews and had often, ex-
pressed warm admiration for the Jewish people. One of his
colleagues in the reform movement in New York politics,
which he helped to initiate, had been Isaac H. Klein; but by
1918 Chapman had ceased to be interested in reform
politics. In the middle twenties, he suddenly discovered
the Catholic “menace” and, at about the same time, the

The Snakes of Ireland 75

“Jewish menace.” It is simply incredible that this man
should have written a sonnet entitled “Cape Cod, Rome,
and Jerusalem” and that it should have been published, as
it was, in the Ku Klux Kourier.

And yet it is not so incredible when one reflects that
Chapman’s old friend, Henry Adams, shared somewhat
the same views. Writing to Charles Milnes Gaskell from
Washington on February 19, 1914, Adams said: “The win-
ter is nearly over, I am seventy-six years old, and nearly
over too. ... It is quite astonishing how the circle nar-
rows. I think that in reality as many people pass by, and I
hear as much as I ever did, but it is no longer a part of me.
I am inclined to think it is not wholly my fault. The atmos-
phere has become a Jew atmosphere. . . . We are still in
power, after a fashion. Our sway over what we call society
is undisputed. We keep the Jews far away, and the anti-Jew
feeling is quite rabid. We are anti-every thing and we are
wild up-lifters; yet we somehow seem to be more Jewish
every day.”

Had Chapman and Adams acquired this prejudice from
actual association with Jews? In the case of Chapman, it
can be demonstrated that the contrary was true; he had
formed warm and lasting friendships with a number of
Jews. Yet Chapman, in a letter dated January 20, 1924,
writes a friend that he has just finished “a lecture on the
Jews — but put it aside because its agitation and agitation
makes me sick.” Another letter, dated December 23, 1925,
reads, “I am dining tonight in a palace of gold plate and
shall talk Jew-baiting with a very able American woman,
wife of an English peer.” In still another letter, written
from Atlantic City on December 29, 1919, he writes:

76 A Mask for Privilege

Judea — Israel — the Lost Tribes — lost no more! Found —
very much found, increased — multiplied — as the sands of the
sea — upon the sands of the sea — in the city of the sea —
Atlantic City — with cliff dwellings of 10,000 each, — and re-
gurgitating with Hebrews — only Hebrews. Families of tens
and dozens — grave old plodders, gay young friskers — angel
Jews, siren Jewesses, — puppy Jews — mastiff Jews — bulging
matrons — spectacled backfish — golden-haired Jewish Dianas
-sable-eyed Jewish Pucks, Jewish Mirandas — Romeos and
Juliets, Jew Caesars — only no Shylock. It is a heathen me-
nagerie of Israel.

Both Chapman and Adams, in fact, are prime examples of
how it is possible to be anti-Semitic without being an anti-
Semite.

The key to an understanding of the anti-Semitism of
such men is to be found in the fact that America had not
turned out to their Hiring or in accordance with their ex-
pectations. Adams had written that, “fit or unfit,” his educa-
tion had ceased in 1871. The balance of profit or loss for the
twenty years that followed was “exceedingly obscure in
1892.” He had lost twenty years and what had he gained?
“Landed, lost, and forgotten, in the centre of this vast plain
of self-content, Adams could see but one active interest,
to which all others were subservient, and which absorbed
the energies of some sixty milfion people to the exclusion
of every other force, real or imagined.” This active interest
consisted in getting ahead in the world, in making money,
in widening the distance between “you” and the fellow
next below.

For years Adams had “hugged his antiquated disfike of
bankers and capitafistic society until he had become fittle
better than a crank. He had known for years that he must

The Snakes of Ireland 77

accept the regime, but he had known a great many other
disagreeable certainties — like age, senility, and death —
against which one made what little resistance one could.
The matter was setded at last by the people. For a hun-
dred years, between 1793 and 1893, the American people
had hesitated, vacillated, swayed forward and back, be-
tween two forces, one simply industrial, the other capital-
istic, centralizing, mechanical. ... A capitalistic system
had been adopted, and if it were to be run at all, it must be
run by capital and capitalistic methods. . . . There, educa-
tion in domestic politics stopped. The rest was question of
gear: of running machinery; of economy; and involved no
disputed principles. Once admitted that the machine must
be efficient, society might dispute in what social interest it
should be run, but in any case it must work concentration.
. . . Society rested, after sweeping into the ash-heap these
cinders of a misdirected education. After this vigorous im-
pulse, nothing remained for a historian but to ask — how
long and how far !” 10

Discrepancy between ideal and act is a trait, as Waldo
Frank has observed, of our schizoid culture. To quote
Emerson to the tycoons of the post-Civil-War period was
about as futile as hiring a hall in Coatesville, Pennsylvania,
to denounce a lynching. Today the split in our cultural
tradition, occasioned by the rise of industrial capitalism,
has become so wide that one can, by a number of simple
tests, measure the extent of the rift. “Measure,” writes
Frank, “what we revere in this man of simple humbleness
[Lincoln], this sharer in the guilt of his brothers on both
sides of the battle line — measure this man of sorrow, this
conscious man, with what we cultivate and admire in the

78 A Mask for Privilege

actualities of life. Measure his total strangeness from the
ways of a folk — complacent, ignorant, and greedy — which
daily adores him.” Such is one measurement of the gulf that
now yawns between ideal and practice in American life.
Memories of the older tradition have not expired, but they
have become extremely faint. In revering Lincoln as we
still do, we acknowledge, as Frank says, “what is most real
in ourselves, however our present life deny it .” 11

Recently the chapter of the National Association for
Advancement of Colored People in Springfield, Illinois, re-
leased a report on the status of Negroes in Springfield. In-
cluded in the report is an account of how six police officers
broke into the coal shed in which a Mrs. Willie Bradley, a
Negro woman, sixty-four years of age, lived with her
daughter. Although they were not armed with a search
warrant, the officers broke into the coal shed, arrested both
women, and held them in jail in default of $5000 bail on a
vagrancy charge! While in the jail, Mrs. Bradley was
beaten into a state of unconsciousness by the turnkey and
was left lying on the floor without medical attention. When
she was taken to the hospital the next day, it was found that
she had two broken ribs. This incident occurred on the
eighty-third anniversary of the issuance of the Emancipation
Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, Illinois.
The same report concludes with a note to the effect that
Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield has recently been permitted
to fall into a state of disrepair. . . .

It is this rift in our cultural tradition that accounts for the
omnipresent ironies in contemporary American life. A
year or so ago, Willson Whitman described a visit to Litch-
field, Connecticut, on Christmas Eve. Candles shone behind

The Snakes of Irelafid 79

fanlights; wreaths had been placed on the doors of the
lovely old white houses; wineglass elms curved above the
quiet streets; and pendants of snow hung from the hand-
some carved gateposts. Harriet Beecher Stowe was bom
in Litchfield. A tablet on the village green marks the place
where Lyman Beecher’s church once stood. Out in the hills,
not far away, John Brown was born. It was a son of Litch-
field, Henry Ward Beecher, who preached a great sermon
against anti-Semitism on June 22, 1877. And yet Willson
Whitman discovered that Jews are not permitted nowadays
to live or to own property in Litchfield, Connecticut.
“Just a sort of agreement,” one Litchfield resident ex-
plained: “you might call it a Christian unity among Litch-
field people on that point.”

CHAPTER IV

A Most Peculiar

Disease

That a countertradition sanctioning the use of anti-Semi-
tism now exists in the United States is a matter of the
utmost importance. Today we know, on the basis of scien-
tific evidence, that frustration breeds aggression. We know
also that aggressive impulses are often displaced or mis-
directed; that frustrations are frequently projected — that
is, attitudes and behaviors which cannot be accepted in the
self are attributed to others; and that frustrations are often
rationalized, which is another way of saying that con-
sciously acceptable motives are substituted for the true
motives which are not consciously acceptable. But the
selection of a target against which an aggressive impulse is
directed is largely determined by tradition rather than by
personal experience. “With each frustration,” as Dr. Ellis
Freeman has written, “the choice of target will tend to be
determined not so much by actual responsibility of the
target as by commonly shared habits of assigning blame '' 1
The bulk of the conditioning influences that produce preju-
dice, racial, religious, political, and nationalistic, find their
source, as Julius Drachsler once pointed out, in the tradi-
tion that the group carries down, and not in personal ex-
periences of the individual. If the personal experiences are
of an irritating sort, then the individual finds his rationaliza-
tion by going back to tradition . 2

A Most Peculiar Disease

81

The countertradition in America has always assigned the
role of target to the minority groups, including the Negro;
but a chain of circumstances has now advanced the Jew to
the front rank in the target category. When demagogic
movements have arisen in times of crisis in the past, a con-
fused and perplexed America has vented its wrath on di-
verse and miscellaneous groups: Jews, Catholics, foreigners,
Negroes, Orientals (as witness the A.P.A. and the K.K.K.
movements). But today there is reason to believe that such
a movement would concentrate its energies on the Jew.
With the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, the decline
in numerical importance of the first-generation immigrant
groups, and the successful assimilation of most of the
second-generation immigrants, the generalized prejudice
has become more specific than in the past. As circum-
stances have eliminated one after another of the possible
scapegoat categories, the Jew has been steadily advanced
to a more prominent and a more isolated position. That
the crackpot native fascist groups have concentrated
their attack on the Jew is a striking confirmation of
this trend. In the depression years, organizations were
formed not to spread hatred of the Irish or the Poles or
the Italians; they were formed to attack Jews. But there
are other, and more compelling, reasons to support the be-
lief that the Jew is now the residual legatee of the counter-
tradition.

1. THE BEST OF SCAPEGOATS
For a variety of historical, psychological, and sociologi-
cal reasons, which have been repeated ad nauseam , the Jew

82 A Mask for Privilege

has always been the best, that is, the most vulnerable, of all
possible scapegoats. The jews are a unique minority, the
minority of minorities. A people without a country, their
religion, and the culture which grew out of it, came to take
the place of territory. Thus they are not merely a religious
sect or minority, but a people in exile. As Talcott Parsons
points out, instead of being a people who had a religion,
they came to be identified with their religion. It is as though
all the Quakers in America were descendants of Basque
refugees. While they are not a racial minority, long isolation
and continued discrimination — one should say “universal”
discrimination — have been responsible for certain social
traits and characteristics which have, to some degree,
marked the Jews as a distinctive people. For all practical
purposes, therefore, they might be called a religious, ethnic,
cultural, and racial minority, a compounding of all the dis-
abilities under which minorities have long suffered. A con-
spicuous international minority, Jews can be baited every-
where. Furthermore their numerical weakness has generally
frustrated their capacity for successful physical resistance.
Occupying a peculiar historical position in relation to the
Christian religion, most so-called “Christian” cultures con-
tain a deep anti-Semitic bias.

, Pages would be required merely to list the psychological
reasons why the Jews have always made an ideal scapegoat
group. Perhaps all of these reasons might be subsumed in
the maxim of La Rochefoucauld that there is something in
human nature that makes us hate those whom we have
harmed. Whatever the motivation, there can be no doubt
that a variety of psychological factors have created a pre-
disposition to select the Jew for a target. The very fact that

A Most Peculiar Disease 83

the Jew has been traditionally used as a scapegoat leads to
his being constantly recast in this role. In short, anti-
Semitism has long been a socially sanctioned and culturally
conditioned mode of expressing aggressive imp uls es. Most
of these factors have a general application in the United
States as well as in Europe.

But there are more specific reasons why, from the point
of view of the demagogue, the Jew is an ideal scapegoat.
Paradoxically, the Jew is more vulnerable to attack than the
Negro, for example, because he is more highly placed in
our society. “Those whom we consider below us,” writes
Dr. J. F. Brown, “we may despise or pity, but we neither
love nor hate them as we do our equals.” The fact that
Jews have risen rapidly on the status ladder lends a specious
plausibility to some of the oldest and boldest lies of the anti-
Semite. “No one can make political capital today,” writes
David Riesman, “out of an attack on witches. No one can
unite a nation riven by caste and economic cleavages by
presenting it with an enemy that is obviously trivial .” 3
Related to this consideration is the fact that American Jews,
by and large, lack social prestige with which to protect their
economic position. Their economic position, furthermore,
is such that it excites the envy of elements in the lower and
the middle classes. Many of the businesses in which Jews
have been successful — and into which they have been driven
by discrimination — fall within the nonsensical “nonproduc"
live,” as distinguished from “productive,” category that the
fascists invariably emphasize. Furthermore, Jew-baiting has
a wide group appeal: to a section of Protestant Funda-
mentalism; to the Coughlinite Catholics; and to many of the
foreign-bom groups. While they have made mistakes —

84 A Mask for Privilege

many mistakes — the native American fascists know what
they are doing, and, as said above, their concentration on
the Jew indicates that they have discovered both his vulner-
ability and his popularity as a scapegoat.

That the Jew is likely to be the residual legatee of the
countertradition is a conclusion that also finds confirmation
in the fact that he is a special kind of immigrant. Most
European immigrant groups have been stereotyped in
America but have managed, with the maturity of the second
generation, to escape from the stereotype. The Jewish
stereotype, on the other hand, has shown a remarkable per-
sistence. A partial explanation for this phenomenon is sug-
gested in a question once raised by Ralph Philip Boas,
namely, “Why should it be treason for a Jew to abandon his
religion and forget his birth any more than for a Frenchman
or a Swede to do so?” That discrimination against Jews has
been more pronounced than against other immigrant groups
does not provide a complete answer to this question. When
a Yugoslav immigrant “assimilates,” in the traditional man-
ner, by changing his name from Martinovitch to Martin,
discarding his native customs, forgetting his native tongue,
and joining Rotary, we applaud his agility and, somewhat
reluctantly perhaps, make room for the New American.
We certainly do not regard Martinovitch as either a traitor
or a renegade. But the Jewish immigrant who changes his
name, joins the Ethical Culture movement or the Christian
Science Church, or marries a Gentile, is generally regarded,
in both camps, as a social renegade. What is perhaps more
important, he often comes to regard himself in much this
same light. In some vague way, he is conscious of having
betrayed an ennobling impulse of his own nature.

A Most Peculiar Disease 85

Suppose a Jewish immigrant has decided in favor of
“total assimilation.” He adopts an Anglo-Saxon name;
marries a Gentile; cuts himself loose from Jewish communal
life; and even manages to pass quite successfully for a non-
Jew. How is this person going to feel, asks Maurice Samuel,
when the conversation suddenly converges on “the Jewish
problem” or takes on anti-Semitic overtones? When an
advertisement specifies “No Jews Wanted” or “Gentiles
Only,” is this emancipated-assimilated Jew to apply any-
way on the theory that he is no longer a Jew? In short, can
he under all circumstances conceal his Jewish origin or
forget it, without a twinge of conscience, a feeling of re-
morse, a sense of shame? Perhaps a few Jewish non-Jews
can do so; but not many.

In the circle of my acquaintance, I have many Jewish
friends who live outside the orbit of the Jewish world.
They feel as out of place in a synagogue as I do in the
Protestant Episcopal Church in which I was once con-
firmed. For the most part children of immigrant parents,
they know only a few more words in Yiddish than I do in
Gaelic. They do not live in predominantly Jewish districts;
they belong to virtually no Jewish organizations; and they
have only the slightest familiarity with Jewish culture. Yet
not one of these individuals would deny, or think of deny-
ing, his Jewish origin. Although they have experienced only
slight discrimination themselves, they remain extremely
sensitive to the issue of anti- Jewish discrimination. I have
asked many of these friends why they think they are
“Jewish” and have yet to receive a plausible answer.

But there is, I believe, an answer. Until the Jewish people
have a homeland, until their survival as a people is an assured

86 A Mask for Privilege

fact, no person of Jewish origin is spiritually free to disclaim
his Jewishness. He simply cannot make a free choice. For
one thing, non-Jewish elements will not permit him to do
so; but, more important, his own conscience will not sanc-
tion such a choice. For as long as Jews are scattered
throughout the world, Jewish survival depends, to some
extent, upon the loyalty of each individual Jew, more par-
ticularly upon the survival of Jewish communities. In this
sense, therefore, each apostate is a renegade. The in-
dividual Polish immigrant may be the loser, as a person,
when he forgets or abandons, disclaims or renounces, his
Polish cultural inheritance. But he is not guilty of a be-
trayal, for Poland still exists and the continuity of Polish
culture and tradition is assured. But the loss of every Jew
through “assimilation” is a blow, at the present time, to
Jewish survival. It is precisely this consideration, of course,
that has worried Jewish leaders in America. How many
tim es, for example, have the rabbis addressed themselves to
the perennial topic: “Can Judaism Survive in America?”
As Joseph Conrad demonstrated in Lord Jim, the natural
history of the human conscience shows that the self-torture
of the individual who abandons his companions on an im-
periled ship is the most intolerable and exquisite of all
tortures.

In the sense that he has not been morally free to make
a choice, as to what he wanted to be, how he wanted to
regard himself, and what faith, if any or none, he desired
to affir m, the Jew has been a special immigrant. In an odd
way, the Gentile has always taken this view of the Jew and
has shown a lack of respect for the Jewish immigrant who
has attempted to assimilate that he has not shown toward

A Most Peculiar Disease 87

other immigrants. While the fact that the Jewish stereotype
is widespread, ancient, pervasive, and firmly embedded in
the culture — deeply etched in the consciousness of Gentiles
— helps to explain this attitude, it does not explain the
nature of the special problems which the Jewish immigrant
has faced. That these problems are more acute today than
ever before — what with the plight of European Jews and
the aggravated Palestinian issue — merely means that we
can expect a heightened, not a lessened Jewish consciousness
in America.

It is not to be implied from the foregoing, however, that
anti-Semitism is a disease of the Diaspora. Many Jews —
Leo Pinsker is a case in point — have defined Judaeophobia
as a psychosis which, transmitted from generation to gen-
eration for over two thousand years, has become essentially
incurable. But this is to confuse “the Jewish Problem” with
anti-Semitism. The Jewish minority problem is unquestion-
ably related to the peculiar history of the Jewish people; but
anti-Semitism is a specific social disease and, as such, is only
indirectly related to the Diaspora. That Jews make an ex-
cellent scapegoat group is to be explained by their history
and experience as a people; but one cannot explain the nature
of anti-Semitism merely by calling attention to the factors —
historical, psychological, sociological — which have made
the Jew a favorite scapegoat.

jf 2 . THE NATURE OF THE WEAPON
, Just as the Jew is the best of scapegoats, so anti-Semitisni
is a favorite weapon of proved efficiency in the socio-eco-
nomic conflicts of a class-riven society. Whatever else anti-

88

A Mask for Privilege

Semitism is or may have been it is today a weapon of re-
action — part of the mechanism of fascism — used for many
interrelated purposes: to confuse the people; to obscure the
basic causes of unrest; to divert attention from these causes;
to cloak the real purposes and objectives of reaction; to
arrest social progress; to fight democracy. Throughout its
long and devious history, through all its various and chang-
ing manifestations, the pertinent questions, in relation to
anti-Semitism, have always been: Who uses it? For what
purposes? Under what circumstances? Against whom? And
to these queries the answers are crystal-clear: anti-Semitism
has always been used by the enemies of the people; for the
purpose of arresting progress; in periods of social upheaval
and social stress; and against the interests of the people.

As an ideology, anti-Semitism is a figment of the imagina-
tion, a myth; but as a weapon used in social conflicts it has
long since proved its efficiency. As an ideology, modem
anti-Semitism has an interesting origin. In 1879 an obscure
Hamburg journalist, Wilhelm Marr, coined the expression
“anti-Semitism.” The science of philology probably cannot
cite another instance where more fateful consequences have
attached to the coinage of a new word. Judaeophobia was a
centuries-old phenomenon in 1879; but, by a verbal trick,
Marr made it possible to invest this hatred with entirely
new implications. For the old hatred was now rationalized
as racial rather than religious in character; nor was it long
before the tendency to confuse racial with social conflicts
invested this hatred with a simply astonishing ambivalence.
A specific, historical phenomenon now became a shifting,
vague, indefinable, well-nigh invisible, many-sided weapon
of abuse. “The very term ‘anti-semitism,’ ” writes S. W.

A Most Peculiar Disease

89

Baron, “became a source of strength to those who gathered
under it. Without positive connotations, it could easily con-
ceal the divergence among the different trends. There was,
in fact, not one anti-semitic movement, but many. . . .
Such an omnibus term could easily cover a multitude of
motives and impulses.”

In large part, the effectiveness of the new weapon of
social conflict consisted in its elusive character: it could not
be defined. The plain truth of the matter is that, today, there
is no existing definition of anti-Semitism that is at all ade-
quate to cover the various senses in which the term is used
or the purposes to which it is put as a weapon of abuse. The
definitions that do exist are confused, contradictory, and in-
consistent, largely for the reason that people have been try-
ing to define, in intellectually understandable terms, a myth,
a vapor, a cloud of smoke. It is as though the doctors of the
world were fighting a disease which they could not define
but the symptoms of which they could easily identify.
Even as a weapon, anti-Semitism is only to be understood
by reference to the social context in which it is used; its use
defines its character. To appreciate the efficiency of anti-
Semitism as a weapon, it is necessary to explore, however
inadequately, some aspects of this vast etymological con-
fusion.

%

.■ In the dictionaries, anti-Semitism is generally defined as
hatred of or opposition to Semites, especially Jews. A mo-
ment’s reflection is sufficient to indicate that this definition
is both inadequate and misleading. Essentially this is the
anti-Semite’s definition of anti-Semitism. It is precisely the
definition that, with malice aforethought, he seeks to propa-
gate. It was by developing the rationalization, after 1879,

90 A Mask for Privilege

that such a hatred existed and that it was based upon racial
antipathy that the anti-Semites succeeded in investing
anti-Semitism with a deadly dynamism, a self-generating,
self-propelling fury. If the source of anti-Semitism is to
be located in hatred of Jews as Jews, rather than in the social
conditions that give rise to ambitious schemes for group
dominance, then the weapon of anti-Semitism can be used
like a dagger in the dark. By focusing attention upon the
objects of hatred rather than the causes, such a definition
actually fans the fires of hatred. The tendency then arises
to confuse the myths advanced to justify the hatred with
the objects of the hatred. Thus for more than fifty years,
Roger’s Thesaurus gave sanction for the use of the word
“Jew” as a synonym for usurer, extortioner, cunning, her-
etic, lickpenny, harpy, schemer, craft, and shifty.

So deceptive is the nature of anti-Semitism as an ideologi-
cal weapon that it has even deceived its victims. In many
of the Jewish encyclopedias, for example, one will find
anti-Semitism defined as “the dislike of the unlike.”! This
definition is clearly misleading, for it fails to account, in
any manner, for the rhythmic character of anti-Semitic
movements, their rise and fall, their ebb and flow. As Dr.
Otto Fenichel has written, “the instinctual structure of the
average man in Germany was no different in 1935 from
what it was in 1925. The psychological mass basis for anti-
Semitism, whatever it may be, existed in 1925 too, but
anti-Semitism was not a political force then .” 4 The German
Jew was no more “unlike” the German in 1935 than in 1925.
It is quite obvious, therefore, that the ethnocentric resist-
ance of in-groups to out-groups cannot possibly explain
the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany after 1925.

A Most Peculiar Disease 91

Furthermore, it is simply not true that racial and cultural
differences invariably give rise to feelings of prejudice and
hostility between unlike groups. There have been long
periods in the history of the Jews when they have lived
among non-Jews under quite favorable conditions. They
were no more “unlike” their neighbors in these periods than
they were in the periods when these same neighbors carted
them off to the stake. Where racial and cultural differences
have existed apart from social contradictions, group dif-
ferences have often been regarded in a comic light rather
than as sources of annoyance and irritation. “The brown
face of the Hindu mystic and the foreign accent of the
Frenchman,” writes Dr. Ellis Freeman, “are both social as-
sets in those circles which are wealthy and secure enough
to indulge their taste for the novel, strange, and even
bizarre.” Individuals who would be shocked to meet a
Negro socially experience no psychological problems in
employing Negroes as servants.

^Then, again, anti-Semitism has been defined, as in the
Dictionary of Sociology (1944), as “opposition by word
and deed to equal participation of Jewish people in the
social and legal rights which a nation affords to its people
generally.” Here the emphasis has shifted to the business,
the activity, of opposing Jews. But the activities of anti-
Semites do not constitute the sum total of anti-Semitism.
A majority of the American people probably oppose anti-
Semitism in the sense that they object to the activities of
professional anti-Semites; but a large section of this same
majority is anti-Semitic in the sense that it tolerates or
practices discrimination against Jews. By drawing attention
to their brutal anti-Jewish activities, the Nazis actually

92 A Mask for Privilege

made it possible for many people to oppose anti-Semitism
while remaining basically anti-Semitic. Any attempt, there-
fore, to define anti-Semitism in terms of the activities of
anti-Semites only further confuses the issue. For such a
definition diverts attention from a whole range of phe-
nomena that can only be regarded as manifestations of
anti-Semitism however well they may be masked by pre-
tenses of one kind or another.

The effectiveness of anti-Semitism as a social weapon
has always consisted in the fact that it has meant so many
different things to so many different groups. This diversity
in meaning has made it possible to use anti-Semitism as a
cement to hold together groups otherwise quite divergent
in outlook, position, and interest. To say, therefore, that
an anti-Semite is inconsistent is to make a meaningless
statement: it is his intention to be inconsistent. In fact, in-
consistency is one of the conspicuous merits of anti-
Semitism as an ideological weapon. No inconsistency in the
anti-Semitic ideology has been more glaring than the
charge that the Jews are the economic overlords, and, at
the same time, the leaders of the revolutionary vanguard.
But there is a touch of demagogic genius in this charge,
for it permits an appeal to the dispossessed and a threat to
the rich to be voiced in a single sentence. Furthermore, to
charge that the Jew has the double and contradictory char-
acter of capitalist and communist can be psychologically
acceptable to the middle-class individual because he feels
that he is threatened simultaneously by both capitalism and
communism!

An extreinely versatile weapon, anti-Semitism has been
used by different groups and social classes for a variety of

A Most 'Peculiar Disease 93

purposes. Neither individuals nor groups can use anti-
Semitism without becoming, to some extent, infected with
the disease themselves. Therefore, since various social
classes have used, or been tricked into using, anti-Semitism
at one time or another in the disputes in which they have
been involved, it has become possible to mobilize a power-
ful mass movement around an essentially negative — even a
mythical — issue. For anti-Semitism extends throughout all
reaches of society, in varying degrees, and is co nfin ed to no
single region or nation or social class, $

One moves a little closer to an understanding of the
nature of anti-Semitism as an ideological weapon by ex-
amining the circumstances that gave rise to its invention.
Classical anti-Semitism had always been premised upon the
charge that the Jews insisted upon preserving a separate
group identity. But modern anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitism
that developed after 1879, owes its existence, as Rabbi
Mordecai Kaplan has pointed out, “mainly to the circum-
stance that the Jew insisted upon taking the Emancipation
seriously.” What the anti-Semites objected to about the
emancipation that followed in the wake of the French
Revolution was that it enabled Jews to compete with non-
Jews in a serious way. As long as the Jew was confined to
the ghetto and denied equal status, he could not offer seri-
ous, general competition. But once these disabilities were
removed, the basis of Jew-baiting shifted from the alleged
“dislike of the unlike” to a dislike of the competitor, who
was hated precisely because he was becoming so like the
majority that he could not be readily identified for purposes
of discri mina tion. This basic aspect of modern anti-Semitism
has always been stressed by the professional anti-Semites.

94 A Mask for Privilege

“Where the Jew disregards and transgresses the bounda-
ries that separate him from the non-Jew,” said Wilhelm
Stopel, “that is the point at which anti-semitism comes into
being.”

Thus the dictionary definition of anti-Semitism as hatred
of or opposition to Jews might well be recast to read: “op-
position to the tendency on the part of Jews after the
Emancipation to become like non-Jews.” It was this same
aspect of modern anti-Semitism that Dr. Bruno Lasker had
in mind when he once said that dislike of the Jew in
America springs from the too rapid assimilation of Jewish
immigrants in this country. When the reasons which
prompted its invention are examined, therefore, it becomes
apparent that anti-Semitism is essentially antidemocratic in
character. First designed to arrest the revolution in Jewish
attitudes after the emancipation, it later became antidemo-
cratic in the broader sense of being used as a weapon to
arrest social progress generally. “As a political ideology,”
writes Donald S. Strong, “anti-semitism without an anti-
revolutionary aspect is so rare as to be almost unknown.”

3. BISMARCK’S INSECT POWDER
One moves still closer to an understanding of the nature
of anti-Semitism as a social weapon by observing how it has
been used in the political and economic conflicts which
came into being with the rise of industrial capitalism. Here
the issue has been somewhat confused by the efforts of a
coterie of economic historians to refute Werner Sombart’s
thesis that capitalism is an invention of the Jews. Many of
these historians have become lost in the thickets of antiquity.

A Most Peculiar Disease 95

from which they have not yet emerged. The origin of
capitalism, however interesting, is irrelevant to the issue of
modem anti-Semitism; what is of great importance, how-
ever, is the velocity and the magnitude of the social changes
which came with the rise of modern industrial capitalism.
How, when, and by whom capitalism was originated are
debatable issues; but there can be no doubt that in the
1870’s both Germany and the United States were in the
throes of a period of profound social change. “The large
scale use of machinery, the gigantic growth of cities, the
rise of a proletariat,” writes Marvin Lowenthal, “did not
begin until the forties, and even in 1862 the industrial
revolution was still more of a promise than a reality.” But
by 1880 the reality of the industrial revolution was unmis-
takable in Germany and it was in relation to the conflicts
which this revolution brought into being that anti-Semitism
began to take on an entirely new significance.

As leaders in the evolution of modem business and
finance, Jews had played an important role in the bourgeois
revolution which had cleared the way for the rise of
modern industrial capitalism. In this earlier straggle be-
tween a rising merchant class and the landed aristocracy,
Jews had been welcome allies of the former. In fact they
had been summoned from the ghettos to aid in the trans-
forming process. In the eyes of the non-Jewish bourgeoi-
sie, however, “liberty, equality, and fraternity” meant, as
Maurice Samuel has written, “liberty of capital from
oppression, equality of capital in the hierarchy of rule,
and the fraternity of businessmen.” The emancipation of
the Jews was essentially an accidental, unreal by-product
of this initial collaboration. Once the bourgeois revolution

9 6 A Mask for Privilege

was won, the ally of yesteryear was suddenly viewed as
an undesirable competitor. Political emancipation was per-
mitted to stand, as a fait accompli , but barriers were
promptly erected, or, in some cases, were never lowered,
against Jews in the social and economic fields. That the
competition first occurred at the top levels of society is
shown by the fact, properly emphasized by Samuel, “that
the proportion of big Jewish traders and financiers dropped
more rapidly than the proportion of small ones, and also
by the fact that the first barriers erected against Jews after
the emancipation were largely social in character.

Observing the conflict within the new bourgeois circles,
Bernard Lazare defined anti-Semitism as “a mere struggle
among the rich, a contest among the possessors of capital.”
It was the capitalist, the merchant, the manufacturer, the
financier among the Christians, he wrote, and not the
proletariat, that first made use of anti-Semitism as a weapon.
“This will explain,” he said, “why anti-semitism is essen-
tially the sentiment of the middle classes.” Many European
socialists were so impressed with this, and similar interpreta-
tions, that they looked with mildly tolerant eyes upon
organized anti-Semitism, often regarding it as a means of
dividing their opposition. For example, Lazare thought that
it was supremely ironic that anti-Semitism, “which every-
where is the creed of the conservative classes,” should have
developed into “an ally of the revolution.” He actually be-
lieved that anti-Semitism was “working for the advantage
of the revolutionary cause ... it stirs up the middle class,
the small tradesmen, and sometimes the peasant, against the
Jewish capitalist, but, in doing so, it gently leads them
toward socialism”! This is not to say, of course, that social-

A Most Peculiar Disease

97

ists encouraged anti-Semitism; but many of them did regard
the “radical” anti-Semitism which began to develop after
1880 as a “pre-fruit” of Social Democracy which would
eventually lead the lower middle class anti-Semites into
their camp.

Having already used anti-Semitism as a means of placing
limitations on Jewish emancipation, the beneficiaries of the
new dispensation naturally resorted to the same weapon in
an effort to divert the growing dissatisfaction of the lower
classes. In the election of 1878, Bismarck, who had been
in alliance with the liberals since 1867, suddenly decided
to check the growth of the Social Democratic Party. As
part of this strategy, he made use of the court chaplain,
Adolf Stoecker, and the latter’s Christian Socialist move-
ment. The Stoeckerites were still close to the old social
hierarchy, to the church, and to the monarchy. Their anti-
Semitism was of the genteel, nonviolent, “Christian” vari-
ety, based on the assumption that baptism, undertaken in
good faith, would solve “the Jewish Problem.” When the
Christian Socialists failed to make much of a showing in the
elections, Bismarck lost interest in them. It was shortly be-
fore his death that he remarked, apropos the new “racial”
anti-Semites, that “in fighting socialism with anti-semitism”
the conservatives had got “hold of the wrong insect pow-
der.”®

By 1880 industrial capitalism was well advanced in Ger-
many: the old social structure was crumbling; past forms of
production and distribution were disintegrating; new cul-
tural and political institutions were emerging; and, accom-
panying these changes, new political tensions and economic
conflicts had developed. It was at this juncture that the

98 A Mask for Privilege

new “racial” or “radical” anti-Semitism of Marr, Ahlwardt,
and their colleagues began to assume the proportions of an
organized movement. Born with the industrial revolution,
this new anti-Semitism was of a quite different character
from the old anti-Semitism of the Junkers, the big bour-
geoisie, and the Christian Socialists. It attacked “the Junkers
and the Jews”; described the Christian religion as “a child
of Jewish religion and Platonism, bom out of wedlock”;
c lam ored for social reform; and was utterly irresponsible
and intransigent in its attacks on the Jews. Being premised
on racial considerations, it rejected assimilation in to to and
called for the elimination of the Jews from all phases of
German society. Existing outside the pale of respectability,
it flouted the law, the church, and the Junkers. Obsessed
with “racial purity” and “blood,” it took over a racial ideol-
ogy previously developed in France. This ideology quickly
assumed dangerous forms in Germany, where the tensions
bom of the new industrial society were much greater than
in France.

This new racial anti-Semitism was an urban phenomenon;
its leaders were teachers, students, members of the free pro-
fessions, shopkeepers, and minor government officials. Mix-
ing their anti-Semitism with a wild variety of other in-
gredients — body-building, vegetarianism, soul-breathing,
monetary reform, and so on — these elements represented
the most unstable section of the middle class. These were
the elements that had rushed headlong into the new occupa-
tions and vocations which had developed with the rise of
modem industrial capitalism. Since these occupations, voca-
tions, and professions had a definite absorptive capacity,
and represented an area of economic life in which Jews

A Most Peculiar Disease 99

were heavily concentrated, the issue could not be com-
promised from the point of view of the anti-Semites. Only
the complete elimination of the Jews, so they reasoned,
would open up the opportunities for which they clamored.
It was precisely because the racial rationalization of anti-
Semitism was uncompromising, totally exclusionist, and
denied the possibility of assimilation that it made such an
appeal to them. Unlike Stoecker these new anti-Semites
showed a real ability to mobilize the lower middle class and
by 1893 they dominated the movement which Stoecker had
controlled in 1880. To a large extent, the new anti-Semitism
divorced itself from conservatism; in fact it was this circum-
stance that prompted Bismarck’s remark about the “wrong
insect powder.” By screaming against “the Junkers and
the Jews,” the new anti-Semites began to get a foothold
in the rural areas. Essentially they were in rebellion against
vestiges of the old social order as well as being against the
new dispensation. “This radicalism,” writes Dr. Paul Mass-
ing, “enabled racial anti-semitism to become the repository
of a multitude of oppositional currents which, although in-
congruous and conflicting with one another, found in it a
common denominator. The greater the social disorganiza-
tion, the more numerous the elements of discontent which
were attracted by the finality of the racial ideology, by its
claim to total critique and guidance.”

As elements of the lower and middle class became in-
creasingly disaffected by a social transformation that threat-
ened their security and status, they began to use anti-
Semitism for political purposes. But it is important to note
that their social betters had previously initiated them to the
uses of anti-Semitism. “While the battle against capital as a

IOO

A Mask for Privilege

whole seems hopeless at this point,” wrote Karl Kautsky,
“the conflict with Judaism, with Jewish capital, seems to
afford better prospects of success.” The assault upon Jewish
or so-called “unproductive capital” is always attractive to
the middle-class victims of the industrial revolution because
it is never discouraged by their social betters and economic
overlords. No one has ever been called a “communist” or a
“revolutionist” for suggesting that the Jews have too much
power or that restrictions should be imposed on “Jewish”
capital. At this point, it is to the interests of the real
beneficiaries (or so they believe) to encourage the process
by which the rising animosity of the lower and middle
classes is directed against the Jews. In fact it is their prior
rejection of the Jew which has already provided the
lightning rod or conductor by which this diversion is
effected.

At the beginning of the industrial crisis, it will generally
be found that anti-Semitic propaganda stresses the theme
of the Jew as Capitalist, the Jew as the Rich Man. The
social discrimination that the upper classes have long prac-
ticed against the Jew is then paralleled by an agitation for
economic discrimination by the lower and middle classes.
As the industrial system matures and the economic crisis
deepens, anti-Semitic movements begin to acquire a velocity
of their own. Once the diversion has become an organized
political movement, once it has passed from literature to pol-
itics, from vague talk about nationalizing department stores
to power issues, Jew and communist become interchange-
able terms in anti-Semitic propaganda.

Despite Bismarck’s warning, the conservatives in Ger-
many continued to use anti-Semitism as an insect powder.

A Most Peculiar Disease ioi

Disturbed by the “radicalism” and violence of the new
racial anti-Semites, however, they used anti-Semitism only
as it suited their purposes; not as a matter of consistent
policy. The issue always seemed to turn on the relation of
the reactionary upper classes to the government at any par-
ticular time. When they were in power, they took care to
dissociate themselves from anti-Semitic rabble rousers; but
when they were out of power or when they were opposed
to the prevailing governmental policies, they never failed
to make use of these same rabble rousers. In general their
attitude toward anti-Semitism was. completely cynical and
opportunistic. “From its inception,” writes Dr. Massing,
“political anti-semitism had been for them an instrument of
attack, intimidation and blackmail, first to resist the ad-
vancement of the liberal bourgeoisie and later to rally small
property against socialist labor. Their relations to anti-
semitism were governed by undiluted class interests.” In
connection with this point, it is interesting to note how the
use of anti-Semitism as a political weapon momentarily sub-
sided when reaction captured control of Congress in
1946 .®

If the attitude of the conservatives in Germany toward
anti-Semitism was cynical and opportunistic, that of the
lower-class and middle-class anti-Semites toward the con-
servatives was essentially ambivalent. They both hated and
envied, feared and respected, the conservative upper classes.
But in the end they compromised with these elements and
the two structures of power became identical. The basis
of this compromise was, of course, the sacrifice of the Jews,
their properties, and their lives. Always cynical about their
ability to manipulate anti-Semites — a cynicism that found

102

A Mask for Privilege

justification in practice — the conservatives saved their prop-
erty but destroyed Germany.

Utterly absurd and irrational, the anti-Semitic myth has
a powerful appeal to disaffected lower- and middie-class ele-
ments. If one examines the lengthy indictment of the jews
which Theodor Fritsch prepared in his anti-Semitic cate-
chism — too lengthy to be quoted here — it will be noted
that each count in the indictment reflected an objective
reality in Germany: usury and sharp business practices
existed; the handicrafts were being destroyed; the press was
being monopolized; business frauds were prevalent; values
of all kinds were being commercialized; vulgarity was
rampant, and so on. The anti-Semitic myth rationalized
all these consequences of the rise of industrial capitalism by
fixing the blame on the Jews. Once its premises were
granted, the myth represented a closed system, a logical
scheme — false in all its conclusions, accurate in its re-
flection of existing social evils. Unable to enter the world
of the rich, fearful of the socialist utopia, the anti-Semites
created a world of their own, a world of fantasy, myth,
and wishful daydreaming, but one which nonetheless re-
flected, however perversely, an unmistakable reality. “The
total rejection of the Jews,” writes Dr. Massing, “reflected
total disaffection of the individuals and groups that took to
the racial myth . . . they had no roots in any of the power-
ful social classes and no loyalties to any of the leading
parties. The fury of their total assault was the fury of frus-
tration and envy.”

Long used by the forces that rose to power with the in-
dustrial revolution, anti-Semitism has become part of the

A Most Peculiar Disease 103

strategy and mechanism of reaction: a powerful instrument
in a desperate and violent struggle for power. So thoroughly
has it become part of the ideology of reaction that one may
well doubt whether, at the present time, a fascist movement
could avoid being anti-Semitic. Various public opinion polls
have shown that antilabor and anti-Semitic attitudes are
dynamically interrelated and interconnected parts of a
single system of ideas. The Fortune poll of February 1946,
for example, showed that anti-Semitic attitudes correlate
with hostility to the Soviet Union and Great Britain; with
disapproval of large-scale government work projects to
help relieve unemployment; and with disapproval of labor
unions.

This same poll showed that anti-Semites constituted 8.8
of the adult population in this country; but, as one might
expect, that they constituted 13.5 of the rich. The follow-
ing table, based on this poll, indicates clearly enough that
the groups who most fear social change are the groups that
are most anti-Semitic:

All U. S. Adults

Rich 6.8%)

Upper Middle Class . . 22.9% |
Lower Middle Class . . 41.7%

Poor 21.0%

Negro 8.6%

29.7%

Anti-Semites

10.4%

26.2%

45.3%

15.8%

2.3%

36.6%

Whatever significance one reads in these figures, it is appar-
ent that only the upper-bracket socio-economic groups
show an anti-Semitic score that is higher than the average
for the nation. Upper-class anti-Semitism is admittedly a
complex affair. As creatures of their culture, many upper
class anti-Semites may honestly share the common belief in
the guilt of the scapegoat; but more often, as the German

104 A Mask for Privilege

experience indicates, they know better but remain quite
willing to use the scapegoat when it serves their interests
to do so. 7

A number of recent studies in the social sciences confirm
the distribution of anti-Semitic attitudes shown by the
Fortune poll. For example, Frenkel-Brunswik and Sanford
found that “high” anti-Semitic attitudes tend to score with
social-political outlook (the high-score anti-Semites tend to
support the status quo)-, and also that high extremes, in anti-
Semitic attitudes, belong to the middle socio-economic
class. 8 Still another study of anti-Semitic attitudes among
university students has established that the anti-Semitism
score increases directly with the amount of the father’s
income. 9

Treitschke once defined anti-Semitism as “a natural re-
action of the German national feeling against a foreign
element which has usurped too large a place in our life.”
This type of definition belongs to the seedtime of an anti-
Semitic movement. Then the stated goal is merely to keep
the foreign element from usurping too large a place in the
national life. Little is said of a specific character about
economic sanctions or punitive measures. The literature of
the movement, at this stage, is full of self-righteous, patri-
otic, nationalistic sentiments. But if anti-Semitism merely
expressed “a natural reaction” against a foreign element in
the population, it is indeed strange that, at this same stage,
such care should be taken to define those qualities of the
foreign group that are supposed to constitute its “foreign-
ness.” Both in Germany and in the United States, “the
Polish Jew” was used as a clotheshorse on which the anti-
Semites draped whatever garments of “traits” and “charac-

A Most Peculiar Disease 105

teristics” seemed best calculated to serve their purposes. If
Jewish traits were so apparent as to provoke a natural re-
action, it is also difficult to understand why, at this same
period, specific questions should be included in club mem-
bership applications to determine whether applicants are
Jewish.

This initial rationalization of the Jew as an “alien” who
encysts in the body politic usually makes a strong appeal to
certain elements. By uprooting the pre-existing cultural pat-
tern, industrialism creates a feeling of alienage in large sec-
tions of the population. This feeling is then projected on
the Jew. People brought up in the earlier culture feel that
the nation is changing; that it is becoming “foreign” to
them; and that they are somehow “aliens” in the land of
their birth. They feel that they have been robbed of a sense
of belonging, of social identification, of emotional security.
They are readily disposed to believe that “something has
gone wrong” — obviously something has; and that they are
being “robbed of their birthright” — which, in a sense, is
true. At this point they do not want to injure anyone: they
merely want what they feel is rightly theirs. To individuals
in this frame of mind, it seems plausible that it is the alien,
the Jew, the newcomer who has disrupted the peace and
tranquillity of society; who has turned the American Dream
into the Industrial Nightmare.

4. THE ENEMY WITHIN

To suggest why the Jew is a favorite scapegoat and to
demonstrate the uses of anti-Semitism as an ideological
weapon, however, neither explains nor accounts for certain

io 6 A Mask for Privilege

basic aspects of the phenomenon. How is one to account
for the extraordinary savagery of latter-day manifestations
of anti-Semitism? How is one to explain the undulant or
rhythmic character of anti-Semitic outbreaks in history?
How can sheer delusions drive an entire people to acts of
madness? A key to these and many related questions is to
be found, I believe, in the apparent growth of anti-Semitism
in a particular society. This growth or progression is indi-
cated in the various stages, however one may define them,
through which an anti-Semitic movement passes. Walter
Rathenau once defined anti-Semitism as “the vertical inva-
sion of society by the barbarians,” but do the barbarians
have a fifth column? Is there an enemy within the gates?

Running through the literally hundreds of definitions of
anti-Semitism that I have collected is the theme that anti-
Semitism is a disease. It has been defined as “a pathological
mental process,” “a disease of the popular mind,” “an in-
stinctual rebellion directed against the authorities, and the
cruel suppression and punishment of this instinctual rebel-
lion, directed against oneself,” “a sort of socio-pathology,”
“a manifestation of social disorganization,” “a deep-rooted
symptom of our culture,” “a disease of Gentile peoples,” “a
cancer in the body politic,” “a disease indigenous to our
economic system,” “a symptom of political, economic and
institutional change,” “a psychosis,” and “a disturbance in
the interaction of the relationships between the individual
and civilization.”

When definitions of this sort are compared with still
another category of definitions, such as “an artificial prod-
uct, a means for keeping reaction alive and leading it to
victory,” “a smoke-screen for confiscation,” and “a wrench

A Most Peculiar Disease 107

in the machinery of democracy,” it is apparent that one
group of definers or the other is confusing cause and effect,
disease and symptom. Perhaps the answer is that anti-
Semitism is a strange mixture of cause and effect. A symp-
tom of unrest and disorganization, it is consciously used to
spread unrest and disorganization. Used as a weapon in
social conflicts, it is also profoundly symptomatic of social
maladjustment. A product of social pathology, it is also an
instrument in power politics. It is easy to demonstrate the
uses to which anti-Semitism is put as an ideological weapon;
it is not so easy to determine what it is, in our society, that
seems to produce anti-Semitism or to induce its growth.

Assuming that anti-Semitism does have this dual aspect,
that it is simultaneously a weapon and a growth or disease,
the question then arises: What kind of disease? Obviously
anti-Semitism is a social disease for it is only by this assump-
tion that one can account for its rhythmic character. To
regard anti-Semitism as a purely psychological phenomenon
is surely as erroneous as to regard it, sociologically, as a mere
manifestation of “the dislike of the unlike” or, in Hugo
Valentin’s definition, as “merely a special case of the hatred
of the foreigner.” Psychoanalytic techniques properly ap-
plied can give us a good account of the various anti-Semitic
“types” and can provide valuable case histories of anti-
Semites. If a sufficient number of such case histories could
be accumulated and analyzed, much light would be thrown
on the influences, cultural and otherwise, that produce the
structure of the anti-Semitic personality and how this struc-
ture functions. But, as the psychoanalysts themselves con-
cede, the question of the genesis of these influences would
still remain unanswered. That the genesis is primarily social

108 A Mask -for Privilege

in character is shown by the incontestable fact that the great
waves of anti-Semitism have always occurred during pe-
riods of sharp social conflict, or pronounced social change,
of immense social upheaval. As Dr. Niles Carpenter has
written: “The Jew has suffered when there were compelling
economic and political reasons for making a victim of him.”
If there were an innate predisposition in human beings to
devour “unlike” human beings, it can hardly be assumed that
this appetite is so thoroughly satisfied at certain periods that
it manifests itself only periodically. On the contrary, the
history of anti-Semitism, in both its classical and its modem
form, shows that it is profoundly symptomatic of political,
economic, and institutional change . 10

For purposes of clarification, one might say that anti-
Semitism is a social disease having a number of peculiar
characteristics. It is a kind of undulant social fever: a deep-
rooted persistent disease; a disease that seems to remain dor-
mant for long periods; a disease the manifestations of which
are correlated with social disorganization. I am told that
there are fevers known to science as specific diseases but
which are also diagnostic of the general health of the pa-
tient. That is to say, the patient is ill with a fever but his
fever chart accurately reflects, apart from the specific in-
fection, the general state of his health. The fever is itself a
disease: people can be inoculated with it; it can be com-
municated; it can cause death. But it is also diagnostic of
conditions unrelated to the infection.

Anti-Semitism is a social disease that has permeated
throughout the Western World and, to some extent, in Asia
affecting, in various degrees, every class and element in so-
ciety. Under certain conditions it is capable, such is its
virulence, of destroying a society; of blighting a culture.

A Most Peculiar Disease 109

It is also an accurate symptom of the conditions which
produce this blight or recession. Anti-Semitism is an excel-
lent diagnostic device to use in studying the health and well-
being of society. For it is a harbinger of war, a symptom of
social sickness, a manifestation of social disorganization.
The groups that spawn anti-Semitism are socially sick
groups. The appearance of overt forms of anti-Semitism is
always a warning sign. The society that produces the sweat
or fever of anti-Semitism is a sick society — how sick, in
fact, can be largely determined by the number of anti-
Semites. When the fever chart shows a rise in anti-Semi-
tism, one can rest assured that society, in some of its parts,
in some of its relationships, has begun to show symptoms of
deep-seated maladjustment and disorganization. The pathol-
ogy of anti-Semitism leaves no room for doubt on this score.

The social function of anti-Semitism seems to be to pro-
vide people with an escape from a reality that has become
intolerable. The panic stemming from an inability to master
reality, writes Dr. Ernst Simmei, “has always been the un-
derlying cause of their taking refuge in anti-semitic delu-
sions and engaging in orgies of hate and destruction.” In
our time this feeling of panic arises in the individual, Dr.
Simmei believes, because he has come to feel that “with
the increasing industrialization of our civilization his ego is
doomed to perish.” While this feeling is real enough, it is
not likely that it could result in group panic were it not
for the fact that the same conditions that produced the
panic also give rise to the temptation on the part of certain
groups to use, manipulate, and organize this feeling for their
particular ends and purposes. If Jews had all the traits ^nd
characteristics which anti-Semites assume that they possess,
and if it be assumed that these traits universally give rise

no

A Mask for Privilege

to feelings of antipathy in non- Jews, the phenomenon of
anti-Semitism would remain as much of a mystery as ever.
For these traits and characteristics, to the extent that they
have any basis whatever in reality, are clearly the results,
not the causes, of anti-Semitism. While all group antag-
onisms are socially conditioned, it is nevertheless clear that
anti-Semitism has come to have a unique relation to the
social crises of the Western World. The conditioning
process has been so long, so pervasive, so thoroughgoing,
that the Jew has come to be, so to speak, institutionalized
as the lightning rod for aggressive impulses in periods of
social crisis.

Since this manuscript was completed and delivered to the
publisher, the Fortune public opinion poll (October 1947)
has presented striking statistical proof of the contention
urged in this chapter that the Jews have become the residual
legatees of the countertradition in American life. Using a
secret ballot — the best form of sampling to test prejudicial
attitudes — Fortune conducted a poll on the question: “Do
you think any of these groups are getting more economic
power anywhere in the United States than is good for the
country?” and secured the following results:

New England East West

and Middle

North

North

South -

South-

Far

Atlantic

Central Central east

Total Percentages

west

West

Protestants

2

2

2

2

2

5

1

Catholics

12

12

11

14

10

14

12

Jews

36

34

40

41

30

32

46

Negroes

8

4

7

5

15

15

7

None of them
Returned blank bal

39

43

40

36

36

39

37

lot or refused

11

12

9

7

15

12

9

A Most Peculiar Disease

in

From a further question, “Do you think any of these groups
are getting more political power anywhere in the United
States than is good for the country?” the following answers
were tabulated:

New England
and Middle

East

North

West

North

South-

South-

Far

Atlantic

Central Central

east

west

West

Protestants

4

4

Total Percentages

3 3 3

10

2

Catholics

15

17

14

15

14

16

17

Jews

21

20

21

26

16

18

31

None of them

49

50

53

49

44

49

45

Returned ballot
or refused

12

12

9

7

16

13

10

Two striking conclusions can be drawn from this poll
conducted by Elmo Roper, America’s leading public opin-
ion analyst: Jews are today the most popular scapegoat
group in the United States (73 per cent of those who had
any hostility to express along economic lines and 52 per cent
of those who had any hostility to express along political
lines selected the Jews as their target) ; and — most impor-
tant — the poll shows that Jews appear to evoke the greatest
hostility in those areas where they are least significant nu-
merically- Only 16 per cent of the big-city dwellers ex-
pressed concern about their political power; but 22 per cent
of the farm population and 28 per cent of the non-farm
communities of 2500 and under think the Jews have too
much to say in government. Agriculture in America, it
might be noted, absorbs only 1 per cent of the gainfully
employed Jews.

But here two important qualifications must be noted.
Since Jews are heavily concentrated in large urban com-

1 12

A Mask for Privilege

munities, one would have to deduct the Jewish from the
non- Jewish total in order to interpret these figures with
any accuracy. A general poll in New York City, for ex-
ample, could be quite misleading. It is also important to
keep in mind that while a high percentage of people in rural
areas may give full credence to the anti-Semitic myth, it
does not follow that discrimination is more pronounced in
small towns than in large cities. On the contrary, it is prob-
ably less, if one may accept the testimony of Jews who have
lived both in cities having a large Jewish element and in
small towns where few Jews resided. What Roper was
probably measuring, therefore, was the degree to which the
Jewish stereotype is accepted; not the intensity of discrim-
ination arising from group competition. The Jewish stereo-
type is to be found in the culture of Guatemalan Indians,
few of whom have probably ever met a Jew. Hence the
prevalence of the stereotype cannot be correlated with the
number of Jews in a particular community; but discrimi-
nation against Jews is most rigorous in those areas in which
they are sufficiently numerous to be regarded as serious
group competitors.

The evidence of anti-Semitism, which this poll reveals,
is as Mr. Roper rightly says “spectacular.” The poll also
shows, quite clearly, that Negroes are placed too low on
the status ladder to make effective scapegoats in a time
of crisis. Actually there is more “prejudice” against Negroes
than Jews (as there is more systematic discrimination); but
since the Negro is identified, as Mr. Roper points out, “as
the nation’s No. 1 underdog,” he attracts the most sympa-
thy and fails to incite the special form of social-economic
envy which makes of anti-Semitism a most peculiar disease.

CHAPTER V

The System of

Exclusion

In dealing with racial minorities in the United States it is
possible to measure the extent of discrimination in housing,
employment, education, and related fields, by various sta-
tistical devices. The pattern of discrimination with these
groups is blunt, overt, and utterly lacking in finesse or
obscurity. Discrimination against Jews is no less real but it
is enormously more complex. The basic explanation for this
difference is to be found in the rather unique position that
Jews occupy in the economy. Since this position is neither
at the bottom nor at the top of the economic hierarchy, but
rather in the marginal positions intermediate between these
extremes, much discrimination against Jews finds expression
in other than the usual forms.

y

Much of the discrimination against Jews is disguised as
“mere competition.” Discrimination against the Jew as busi-
nessman, as salesman, as doctor, as lawyer, is often hard to
identify. For in an economy characterized by cutthroat
competition, a specialized form of group discrimination can
be readily passed off as merely another manifestation of the
competitive impulse. The higher one ascends on the social
and economic ladder, the less overt and the more urbane
does the pattern become. And since prejudice against Jews
is most intense at the middle or upper-class level, it is not

1 14 A Mask for Privilege

surprising that it should be difficult to trace. It is this pecu-
liarity in the pattern of discrimination against Jews that has
always given special meaning to what is euphemistically
called “social discrimination.” J

1. THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION

In a cheerful appraisal of the prospects of Jewish life in
America written in 1917, Ralph Philip Boas concluded that
“it is a happy chance for the American Jew that his age-
long persecution has either ended or has degenerated into
petty social discrimination in this country.” With scarcely
a single exception, the leaders of American Jewry have
always written off “social discrimination” as petty or mean-
ingless, an insignificant manifestation of anti-Semitism. In
large part this attitude is to be explained in terms of the
unwillingness of a proud and sensitive people to confess
that social discrimination had hurt, psychologically as well
as economically.

Not wanting to confess that social discrimination was
important, the upper-class leaders of American Jewry have
studiously discounted its significance and have attempted
to evade the pattern by establishing a set of separate and
parallel institutions. The very alacrity with which Jews,
once excluded from the upper sanctums of society, pro-
ceeded to build their own clubs, resorts, hotels, and recrea-
tional centers — and to establish their own fraternities and
sororities — is, however, the best proof that exclusion was a
real and not a fancied blow.

The failure on the part of both Jews and Gentiles to
admit the significance of social discrimination is also to be

The Syste?n of Exclusion 115

explained in terms of the tendency in American culture to
deny the existence of realities which conflict with our
equalitarian ideals. “Democracy of feeling is expected of
us,” as Charles Horton Cooley once said, “and if we do not
have it we usually simulate it.” Thus social discrimination
is frequently rationalized as “freedom of association” or as
the tendency on the part of persons of similar backgrounds,
tastes, interests, and culture to associate together The trus-
tees of the university club in the average American city
would be grossly offended, for example, if it were sug-
gested that the exclusion of Jews was a manifestation of
anti-Semitism. “Haven’t we a right,” they would say, “to
determine our own companions? Can’t we be arbitrary in
the choice of social associates? We have nothing against
Jews. Some of our best friends are Jews. The point is that
they would not be happy here.” And so forth. Familiar in
this, and many other versions, the argument seems quite
plausible; but a moment’s reflection is sufficient to demon-
strate its specious character. *

In most American cities it will be found that the reins
of social control can be traced to a particular “prestige”
club or similar institution. Not that the club, as such, holds
the reins of power; but rather that the forces represented
by its membership are the dominant forces in the com-
munity. The membership of such a club is a mirror which
accurately reflects the identity and relationships of power
groupings in the community. In fact, social institutions of
this type are a favorite mechanism by which power rela-
tionships are established and maintained. It is precisely for
this reason that membership is invested with a premium
value and is regarded as important and desirable.

u 6 A Mask for Privilege

In The Social Life of a Modern Community (1941) Dr.
Lloyd Warner and his associates have given a scientific
demonstration of the functions of “prestige” organizations.
They found, for example, that institutions of this sort help
to maintain higher and lower ranking in the community;
that they function as a mechanism for placing people in the
class hierarchy; and tfiat they serve to impede movement
out of the middle class into the upper class. In short, they
organize and regulate upward social mobility. The selective
policies of such institutions have, of course, a dual effect:
they impede upward social mobility for the groups ex-
cluded; but they smooth the way for those included. “If a
man were accepted,” they found, “by one of the upper
class clubs, his position in society became higher and more
secure. However, this same association, by refusing to admit
certain individuals who wished to join it, might prevent
their rise into a higher society than they at the time oc-
cupied.” This consequence might, indeed, be regarded
as a sociological commonplace. “The self-made man finds
club life one of the best ways of entry into the ruling
class.” 1

To say that such institutions are premised upon the mu-
tual liking and affection of the individuals constituting the
membership is sheer nonsense. Institutions of this character
are not based on the innate congeniality of like-minded per-
sons, but rather on the strategical consideration of consoli-
dating a power relationship. Social power is organized by
exclusion. The larger the number of groups that can be ex-
cluded, the less will power have to be shared. This is pre-
cisely what is implied by the term “exclusive.” The function
of an exclusive institution is to exclude. Therefore to char-

The System of Exclusion 117

acterize such institutions as “purely social” is to misconceive
their reason for being.

Not only do such institutions serve to symbolize the ex-
clusion of certain groups from decisively influential posi-
tions of power, but they consolidate and augment power in
another way. Institutions of lesser social rank tend to
imitate the pattern established at the top and thus the
exception comes to be the rule. As an anonymous Jew
wrote in the Atlantic Monthly for October 1924, “it is
natural that men whose social life is spent together should
also desire to be associated together in business. . . . This
consideration cannot affect a business owned by an indi-
vidual or a very small group. It will arise in concerns where
the social life is well developed, as in banks, where officers
are apt to belong to clubs of one kind or another.”

Apart from considerations of this character, it is quite
apparent, as Dr. Robert Lynd has observed, that “the over-
whelmingly dominant criterion of significant likeness in our
culture is likeness in wealth.” Nearly all the subtleties of
human likeness are played down. Our social system is one
in which both “joining and the aims of organizations are
not free and spontaneous but controlled by the need to
muscle in on an apparatus of power which controls life
chances in the culture.” 2

“Prestige” institutions show little concern for the “innate
congeniality of like-minded persons.” Existing to protect
the positions of power and influence held by their members
in the community, they concentrate on organizing social
power by exclusion. In Los Angeles, where I live, everyone
knows that the Athletic Club is less exclusive than the Uni-
versity Club and that the latter is less exclusive than the

ii8 A Mask -for Privilege

California Club. Initiation fees, dues, and eligibility rules
neatly correlate with the measure of exclusiveness. “These
largely non-overlapping groups,” wrote Dr. Lynd in Mid-
dletown, “carefully selected for prowess in business, highly
competitive, and constituting a hierarchy in the prestige
their membership bestows, exemplify more than do churches
or lodges the prepotent values of the dominant business men
of the city.” The lodge of the small town is much less likely
to be exclusive than the city club, for the hierarchy of the
clubs reflects the hierarchy of the large, impersonal cor-
porate enterprises — position in one is linked up with, and
makes easier the achievement of, position in the other. The
professional groups in particular are drawn to these aggre-
gates of social power, for they are well aware of the fact
that higher social position not only attracts clientele but
becomes an important measure of professional standing.

In a society verbally devoted to democratic ideals, in-
vidious distinctions are often masked by the allegiance
which even the rich acknowledge to these ideals. In such
a society, as Lewis Browne has noted, what passes for so-
ciety is wealth in its own right and is therefore “under no
duress to open its portals to Jews.” 3 It was the absence of
a landed gentry and titles of nobility in America, coupled
with the existence of political democracy, that compelled
the moneyed classes to emphasize a rigid social exclusive-
ness as a means of consolidating their power. This pattern
of social exclusion, insofar as Jews are concerned, has been
more pronounced among the upper classes of America than
among their counterparts in Europe. Up to 1933 the exclu-
sion of Jews from clubs, hotels, summer resorts, and resi-
dential districts was neither as obvious nor as deep-seated

The Sy stein of Exclusion 119

in Germany as in the United States. 4 In fact, nearly every
comparison of European and American anti-Semitism has
stressed the fact that social discrimination has always been
more flagrant here than in Europe. That social discrimina-
tion in this country reflects an underlying economic reality
has merely tended to make its expression less offensive. “We
do not commonly grudge a man superiority,” as Cooley
shrewdly observed, “if he consults our self-respect in the
use of it.” The folk-belief that any American can become
a millionaire has, in effect, robbed social discrimination of
its edge.

Where social power is based on the aristocratic concept,
as in Great Britain, the Jew is more likely to find his place by
achievement, as witness the careers of Disraeli, Sir Herbert
Samuels, and Viscount Reading, and his social position tends
to reinforce his economic power. But here the situation is
quite different. “In the United States,” writes David Ries-
man, “the locus of social power is not personified in a hered-
itary aristocracy. There is no feudal hierarchy, no established
church, little military tradition, save in the South. Social
prestige in the sense of dominating the American scene is
attached to the big industrialists whose names or companies
are household words: the Fords, the du Ponts, the Eugene
Graces. A satellite glow attaches to the navy, the bishopric,
the plantation owners, and the diplomatic service. These,
and the ‘old families,’ have social prestige in the society-
page sense. Every one of these rosters is conspicuously
clear of Jews. The intellectual professions, in which Jews
share: doctors, lawyers, professors, the civil service as a
whole, have no accepted social place, even as compared
with Europe.” 6

120

A Mask for Privilege

Social discrimination in a political democracy requires
the elimination of groups since the elimination of individ-
uals is often difficult to rationalize. From the point of view
of the possession of wealth, social grace, and culture, indi-
vidual Jews clearly meet the canons of social acceptability.
And since they cannot be distinguished racially from the
dominant groups, they must be excluded by name, as a
matter of policy, as a social fiat. To be effective, such ex-
clusion must be practiced in all institutions in which mem-
bership is the open sesame to social position. Hence the club
- the social club, the university club, the country club, the
town club — becomes an all-important symbol of social
acceptability. Social discrimination naturally leads to eco-
nomic and political discrimination since it isolates the
excluded group from identification with the important
symbols of power, and in the further sense that social
power is an important means of protecting economic and
political power. Political life issues from social life “like a
somatic dream,” as John Berryman has said in a brilliant
short story, “The Imaginary Jew.” s

Of the various “white” groups in our society, Jews can
be most readily excluded from the category of the socially
acceptable. In the first place, they are not Christians — an
important count against them; and in the second place, they
are mostly latecomers. Other groups would unquestionably
have been excluded by name were it not for the curiously
mixed character of the American population and the man-
ner in which ethnic groups are bunched geographically. For
example, where Scandinavian immigrants have settled in a
community at an early date, it has been difficult to exclude
them from social power as individual Scandinavians have

121

The System of Exclusion

prospered and acquired status. Once Scandinavians are ad-
mitted to social power in one community, the bar against
them loses its snobbish effectiveness elsewhere. In other
communities, Italians may occupy this secondary role or
position. In fact, the Jews are the only secondary group
not marked by racial difference that can be universally
excluded.

It should also be noted that the exclusion of the Jew
rests upon a pole opposite to the exclusion of the Negro.
The Negro cannot be accepted because he is regarded as
a member of an inferior race; but this charge is practically
never raised against the Jews. When racial and cultural
equality is admitted, the purpose of exclusion is much more
sharply defined. By definition in the Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, social discrimination involves the unequal
treatment of equals and hence implies “an alteration in com-
petitive power of those presumed to possess a freely compet-
itive status.” While it is true that certain nationality groups
have not been permitted to share in social power to the
extent that their numbers and success would warrant, and
while it is also true that many nationality differences cor-
relate with differences in religious affiliations, still it has
been diffi cult to bar other white ethnic groups with the
effectiveness that Jews have been barred.

/The social exclusion of Jews is important, not merely in
the sense that it exposes their economic position and leads
to political discrimination, but also in the sense that it in-
tensifies the prejudice against them. “It may of course be
argued,” writes Dr. Monroe E. Deutsch, “that as social in-
stitutions they [the clubs] have a right to choose their
members as associates . . . but I firmly believe that the

122 A Mask for Privilege

erection of such barriers tends to create or accentuate in
the minds of some of our so-called first citizens a feeling
that Jews per se are a separate and more or less segregated
and undesirable group. If you decline to let a man eat beside
you in a club, merely because he is a Jew, you are certainly
helping to drive a nail into the wall of exclusion. In dis-
cussing the situation in Nazi Germany the point has often
been made that those who, though not members of the
party, nevertheless accepted the acts of the Nazis and
helped perpetuate them in power cannot avoid sharing
responsibility for the horrible deeds that were perpetrated
by those whom they supported in office. I wonder whether
the members of some of our exclusive clubs ( exclusive in
the proper use of the term) are not, unthinkingly (it may
be), in spirit aligning themselves with Father Coughlin and
Gerald L. K. Smith .” 7

The pattern of social discrimination against Jews in the
United States is well-nigh universal. An examination of the
membership list of the key prestige club in almost any
American city will reveal that Jews have been excluded
either by long-standing custom or by express provision.
Even more significant, however, is the fact that this
same examination will also reveal that, at one time, a
few Jews were members of these clubs. Where German
Jews were on the scene when the community started to
grow, before the status lines were drawn with sharpness,
they were quite frequently accepted as members. In fact,
they were often taken into membership with a naive un-
awareness of their Jewishness or a marked indifference to
the fact. But in most cases it will be noted that, at a later
date, further Jewish applications were not accepted, as a

The System of Exclusion 123

matter of policy, with an insulting exception being noted
for “those now in good standing.” Generally speaking, this
change of policy has come about when status lines have
begun to be drawn with sharpness in the particular com-
munity. This date has naturally varied from community to
community. In some cities — Minneapolis is a case in point
— the exclusionist policy first became pronounced immedi-
ately after the First World War; in other cities it devel-
oped at an earlier date; and in still other communities it did
not emerge until the late thirties. Dr. Everett R. Clinchy
has observed that social discrimination in general became
more blatant in the I920’s. 8 |

I will cite only one of many illustrations of this process.
The Gipsy Club is the most important prestige organization
in Huntington, West Virginia, a city of approximately
80,000 population with a small Jewish community of, per-
haps, 800 people. The Jewish community in Huntington is
approximately as old as the city itself. In the early history
of the Gipsy Club, a few Jews were elected to membership.
For the most part, they were professional men, of means,
descendants of early Jewish immigrants. But the bylaws of
the club were amended in 1939 to provide that membership
was open only to “gentlemen of non-Jewish origin,” with
the usual exception noted for Jewfish members then in good
standing. "When this amendment was first proposed, the
Jewish members of the club requested that it be withdrawn
and accompanied the request with two offers: first, they
offered to resign from the club; and, second, they offered
to secure formal written assurance from the Jewish com-
munity that the club would not be “embarrassed” by fur-
ther Jewish applications. But this gesture of appeasement

124 A Mask for Privilege

was flouted: the amendment was promptly adopted, in dis-
regard of the request and its conditions.

The timing of exclusionist policies is important since it
indicates that the bars are raised when social control prom-
ises to pass out of the hands of “the indigenous people.”
What the bars reflect, therefore, is not so much a prejudice
against Jews as a desire to augment power by excluding
the Jewish group. The rationalizations then offered to jus-
tify the change in policy are essentially ex post facto in
character. The exclusion is not based upon any animus
against Jews as Jews, nor is it based upon observation or
experience. It expresses a social reality, not a personal eccen-
tricity or prejudice. 9

This brief analysis indicates that anti-Semitism in the
United States, if it is to be understood, must be studied
from the top down and not from the bottom up. Social
exclusion, at the top, is repeated or imitated at the lower
levels of the society, frhe business executive who has
achieved the Nirvana of membership in the X club selects
as his junior executives men who are ascending the socio-
economic ladder on the same escalator. Seeing how the
system works, these junior executives, in turn, apply exclu-
sionist policies in the selection of their assistants. Clubs and
social institutions are important mechanisms by which this
s^generating, power-augmenting process is set in motion.

It is therefore absurd to regard social discrimination as
an individual and unorganized phenomenon. It is, on the
contrary, highly organized. A private prejudice is one thing ;
a policy of discrimination is another. Discrimination against
groups necessarily implies organization. Group discrimina-
tion cannot be effective unless exclusion is adopted as a pol-

12 5

The System of Exclusion

icy, and this implies a consensus or agreement which in turn
implies organization. If it were simply a question of some in-
dividuals liking Jews and others not liking them, one would
expect this diversity of 'sentiment to be reflected in a
diversity of practice; but the practice, at certain levels of
society, is uniform, consistent, and, one might say, universal.
Even where Jews have separate clubs, these clubs are not
recognized on a parity with non-Jewish clubs. For example,
the Western Golf Association admits Jewish golf clubs to
associate membership only, 10

If the exclusion of Jews in the upper levels of society
were unorganized, then one would expect this exclusion to
cease at the point where public life begins. However, the
exclusion of Jews from certain resort hotels, summer resorts,
semipublic golf clubs, and certain residential districts, is
part and patcel of the same organized discrimination to be
found in the exclusive clubs. It represents, in fact, an exten-
sion of private policies to the outlying territories which the
social elite are determined to pre-empt. In this semipublic,
semiprivate area of social life, a pattern of discrimination
against Jews has existed since the Grand Union Hotel inci-
dent of 1877. From the Eastern seaboard, it has gradually
spread through the Middle West. In the resort areas around
Lake Michigan “incidents” have been occurring for the
last twenty years. For example, a colony of lake-shore cot-
tages occupied by Jewish families near Milwaukee was
burned in 1928 and again in 1929. The pattern is less pro-
nounced on the West Coast but it exists even there.

This same upper-class snobbishness is reflected in what
might be called “the concept of the gentleman.” In the First
World War, the manual used by medical advisory boards

1 26 A Mask for Privilege

in selecting army personnel contained this extraordinary
statement: “The foreign born, especially Jews, are more
apt to malinger than the native born,” while the manual
used in training officers at Plattsburg defined the “ideal
officer” as “a Christian gentleman.” On February 6 , 1932,
the Army and Navy Register contained an article pointing
out why more Jews were not to be found in the armed
services: “The pay is poor, there is no profit in it, and,
more, they might be called upon to die for the country of
their adoption.” The usual protest was filed, of course, and
the usual disclaimer was noted in the Register. At about the
same time, ads appeared in the Philadelphia press calling
for “Gentile” recruits for the National Guard. Again the
usual protests were entered and the usual retraction ob-
tained. Minimizing the number of Jews in the professional
officer class is, again, merely another device whereby social
power is maximized for other groups. One may even infer
that the pronounced anti-Semitism of men like Major Gen-
eral George Van Horn Moseley, U.S.A., Retired, stems
from their identification with this class . 11

2 . THE OLD SCHOOL TIE

Social discrimination in American colleges and universi-
ties is one of the most important means by which group
attitudes are conditioned in this country. To those who
believe that social discrimination is a petty and insignificant
issue, Heywood Broun gave the correct answer years ago,
when he said that it was his impression that “social slights
may be the most important of all” and observed that “the
prejudice of the college fraternity and the college club can

The System of Exclusion 127

scar a youngster for his entire life.” The freshman year in
college is an extremely important year in the life of the
average college student. Since so many students, particu-
larly in the Middle West, come to college from small towns
and rural areas where the -word “Jew” has only metaphori-
cal or possibly Biblical connotations, they receive their first
basic instruction in the politics of prejudice in their fresh-
man year. The experience is probably no less significant for
Jewish than for Gentile students. Although he may be
familiar with prejudice, the average Jewish student first
encounters total and arbitrary exclusion in college.

In Personal History, Vincent Sheean gives a vivid and
unforgettable account of how he happened by mistake to
join a Jewish fraternity. “Incredible though it seemed after-
wards,” he writes, “I had never known a Jew in my life
and had no idea that there were so many of them growing
there under my eyes. I had only the romantic and provincial
notions about Jews: thought of them as bearded old gentle-
men with magic powers and vast stores of gold.” John
Berryman, in the short story to which I have referred, tells
of how he “arrived at a metropolitan university without
any clear idea of what in modem life a Jew was, — without
even a clear consciousness of having seen one. ... I had
not escaped, of course, a sense that humans somewhat dif-
ferent from ourselves, called ‘Jews,’ existed as in the middle
distance and were best kept there, but this sense was of the
vaguest. From what it was derived I do not know; I do not
recall feeling the least curiosity about it, or about Jews;
I had, simply, from the atmosphere of an advanced hetero-
geneous democratic society, ingathered a gently negative
attitude toward Jews.” As with Sheean, his discovery of the

130 A Mask for Privilege

societies with selected memberships. Branding all those who
advocate the voluntary elimination of exclusionist bars or
the abandonment of the fraternity system as “illiberal,” Dr.
Stone said:

It is no accident that specific demands have been made to
break all racial bars to fraternity membership and that specific
cases have arisen to force the issue.

The mass strikes, the effort for economic domination of the
individual, the new race pressures and the opposition to secret
selective associations are offsprings and outgrowths of a phi-
losophy of “social action” deeply imbedded in a host of govern-
ment agencies and taking its roots in Marxian concepts.

Here, by clear implication, a challenge to the exclusionist
policies of the fraternities is correlated with an attack on
the economic system; one can only assume, therefore, that
Dean Stone considers secret selective associations a prop to
economic privilege.

The exclusion practiced by fraternities and sororities is
closely related to similar practices to be noted in the admis-
sion of students and the selection of faculty. Many univer-
sity instructors and administrative officials are themselves
members of fraternities which practice exclusion. Noting
this fact, Heywood Broun suggested that “part of student
prejudice might be traced to professorial or presidential
policy.” It cannot be denied that Jews have had a difficult
time in securing appointments as college and university
instructors; that particular departments in particular insti-
tutions have traditionally been closed to jews; and that
advancement for Jewish instructors has been retarded by
anti-Semitic prejudices. For example, in the American Jew-
ish Yearbook for 1937-1938 one finds the statement: “It is

The System of Exchision 13 1

very difficult these days for Jews to become full professors
in the leading universities.” A detailed exposition of the
difficulties which Jews have long encountered in the aca-
demic field may be found in Ludwig Lewisohn’s famous
autobiography. This difficulty, in turn, is closely related to
the much larger question of the employment of Jews as
teachers in secondary schools, both public and private, long
a sore point with Jews, and the subject of numerous in-
quiries and investigations . 13 Discrimination in the secondary
schools has, of course, made it difficult for Jews to advance
to positions in the colleges and universities.

In appraising the significance of anti-Semitic practices of
various kinds in American colleges and universities, it is well
to keep in mind that in Europe colleges and universities
were always seedbeds of prejudice. Furthermore, it is the
totality of college experience, rather than any particular
practice, that is important. It is a matter, as Broun said, “of
slurring remarks, social aloofness, exclusion from honorary
fraternities, glee clubs, managership of social organizations;
difficulty of election to honorary fraternities, discrimination
in campus politics, exclusions of Jewish fraternities from
inter-fraternity boards; offensive jokes in student publica-
tions and student dramatics, and a general unfrien dlin ess.”
While the general situation has probably improved since
Broun wrote these comments in 1931, it is still bad. The
anti-Semitism to be found in American colleges and univer-
sities is both a cause and an effect of middle-class prejudice.
College and university students in this country are largely
recruited from the middle class . 14 As such they reflect
middle-class attitudes and, at the same time, these attitudes
are re-enforced by college and university experiences. The

132 A Mask for Privilege

trump card of anti-Semitism in higher education, however,
consists in the quota system.

3. THE QUOTA SYSTEM

The only profession I know of that does not bar Jews is the
rabbinical profession.

— DR. STEPHEN S. WISE

It is almost impossible to fix a date when American col-
leges and universities began to adhere to an official or un-
official quota system. The evidence would seem to indicate,
however, that the exclusion of Jews from fraternities and
sororities and from the teaching profession was a factor that
antedated and contributed to the rise of the quota system.
It is also apparent that the quota system first began to
pinch, so far as Jews were concerned, in the period imme-
diately after the First World War. In fact, it was President
A. L. Lowell’s commencement address in June 1922 — the
celebrated “Harvard Incident” — that first brought the
whole question into the open. President Lowell’s address
followed by two years the launching of Henry Ford’s
attack against the Jews. If the latter was given added sig-
nificance by reason of the fact that it was launched by a
leading American industrialist, so the formal proposal of a
numerus clausus was given added emphasis when offered by
a Lowell who was president of Harvard University.

With the apparently satisfactory resolution of the Har-
vard incident — the Board of Overseers repudiated the sug-
gestion of quotas much as Henry Ford later retracted his
charges against the Jews — the quota issue seemed to have
been settled. But such was not the case. In Christians

The System of Exclusion 133

Only , Heywood Broun and George Britt demonstrated
that an ever-increasing number of Jewish medical students
were being forced to study abroad, in Vienna, Glasgow,
and other European centers. Starting in the Eastern univer-
sities, the quota system rapidly spread west and south. In
1931 the president of the University of Alabama stated that
if the university accepted all the applications it was then
receiving from Jewish students, the freshman class in the
school of medicine would be filled twice over and native
Alabamans would be altogether excluded.

The pressure of Jewish students to enter the “free pro-
fessions,” notably law and medicine, has always reflected
the bias against them in those professions having a direct,
functional relation to the key American industries. For
example, the difficulty that Jews have experienced in se-
curing employment as technicians and engineers has auto-
matically deflected many of them into law and medicine.
Jews have sought out the free professions for the simple
reason that, once a diploma and certificate have been ob-
tained, no one can prevent a Jew, or anyone else for that
matter, from attempting to earn a living. Quotas have been
more difficult to maintain in the law schools than in medi-
cine, since medical training requires hospital facilities, in-
ternship, and so on. But there has been a great deal of
prejudice, at one time or another, against Jews in law, and
the bar associations of several American cities have in fairly
recent times considered the advisability of a quota system.
Since the free professions have always had a special attrac-
tion for students from the middle class, both Jewish and
Gentile, it is not surprising that sharp conflicts have devel-
oped in the professions. It should be noted, in this connec-

134 A Mask for Privilege

don, that several studies have shown that labor groups are
more likely to be anti-Negro than white-collar groups; but
that the latter are more likely to be anti-Semitic. The all-
important factor here, of course, is group competition.
Discrimination against Jews is likely to be most pronounced
at the middle-class level because it is here that group com-
petition is concentrated. Indeed, this is one of the peculi-
arities of anti-Semitism.

Two days after the atomic bomb story was released to
the press, New York newspapers carried a small item to the
effect that Dr. Ernest M. Hopkins, president of Dartmouth
College, not only admitted but vigorously defended the
existence of a quota system at Dartmouth. The admission
came in the form of a letter written to Herman Shumlin
under date of April 2, 1945, but not released to the press
until August 7. 15 In this letter Dr. Hopkins took the posi-
tion that a quota was necessary, first, to maintain Dart-
mouth’s tradition of “racial tolerance,” and, second, to
protect the Jews from anti-Semitism. If Dartmouth did not
have a quota system, Dr. Hopkins reasoned, it would soon
be forced to exclude Jews altogether, which, in turn, would
be adverse to Jewish interests generally. “Dartmouth Col-
lege,” said Dr. Hopkins, “is a Christian college founded for
the Christianization of its students.” 16 That Dr. John S.
Dickey, the new president of Dartmouth, was a member of
the President’s Committee on Civil Rights would indicate
that the Hopkins statement no longer represents official
Dartmouth policy. I have heard, on excellent authority, that
Dr. Dickey is making a strong effort to eliminate the quota
policy.

Recently a great amount of evidence has been unearthed

The System of Exclusion 135

which establishes beyond question that, pious commence-
ment day disclaimers to the contrary, the quota system is
deeply entrenched in American colleges and universities.
One such study indicates that the enrollment of Jews in
medical schools has been reduced by approximately 50 per
cent in the last twenty years. In the medical schools in-
cluded in this survey, the class of 1937 numbered 794
Jewish students; the class of 1940 only 477. In the class of
1920, 46 Jewish students were admitted to the College of
Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, whereas
only 12 were admitted in 1940, despite a constant and
mounting list of Jewish applications. Jewish enrollment
dropped in the medical school at Syracuse University
from 19.44 per cent in 1936 to 6 per cent in 1942; from
40 per cent at Cornell University, twenty-five years ago,
to 5 per cent at the present time. Practically every medical
school in the country asks for a statement of race or religion
or both and some of them request photographs and even
inquire if the student has ever changed his name. A list of
some of the medical schools which have a rigid quota sys-
tem, denied in words but applied in fact, would include
the following: Yale, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Dartmouth,
Cornell, Rochester, Duke, Virginia, Northwestern, Syra-
cuse, Baylor, and Bowman Gray School of Medicine of
Wake Forest College; while those having a mildly discrimi-
natory policy would include the University of Chicago,
University of Maryland, Boston University, Wayne Uni-
versity, Washington University, University of Cincinnati,
University of California, Jefferson Medical College, Temple
University, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. 17
Not only is this pattern fairly universal in American medi-

136 A Mask for Privilege

cal schools, but it has apparently become more rigid in the
last twenty years.

That the quota system also exists in liberal arts colleges
is well established. In a survey of the admission practices of
700 liberal arts colleges, Dan W. Dodson found that 99
per cent of the institutions that replied denied the existence
of quotas against Catholics and Jews. Only 4 institutions of
the 520 who answered his questionnaire admitted that they
excluded Catholics; only 7 admitted that they excluded
Jews; while 94 institutions, in the South, readily admitted,
of course, that they excluded Negroes. “These figures,”
writes Mr. Dodson, “give a true measure of the pervasive
hypocrisy on the issue. Virtually all college and university
officials are aware that discrimination is the rule rather
than the exception.” Here, for example, are a few of Dod-
son’s findings: Colgate regularly admits about 4 or 5
Jewish students a year although it receives from 200 to
300 Jewish applications; Dartmouth admits only 25 or
30 students a year out of 500 or more annual Jewish ap-
plications; while Princeton maintains a tight Jewish quota
of less than 4 per cent of its enrollment. Mr. Dodson
found that “flagrant discrimination” is practiced by the Big
Seven women’s colleges: Barnard, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn
Mawr, Vassar, Mount Holyoke, and Radcliffe. While the
existence of the quota system is usually denied, occasionally
one finds a candid official. Thus Emerson College in Boston
— and a slight irony may be noted here — rejected the
application of a Jewish girl with the notation: “Due to the
fact that our enrollments have become out of balance, we
are obliged to refuse all Jewish applicants until a balance
has been restored.” 18 And, in the early thirties, Lasell

The System of Exclusion 137

Seminary in Boston admitted the existence of a 3 per cent
quota.

In. a recent report, the Mayor’s Committee on Unity in
New York found: ( 1 ) that discrimination against Jews,
Catholics, and Negroes is practiced in the private nonsec-
tarian schools of higher learning; ( 2 ) that there is reason to
believe that the situation has deteriorated rapidly in the last
decade; (3) that almost without exception the nonsectarian
private colleges and professional schools in New York City
have established limitations on the percentage of students
admitted from New York City in all or many of their
divisions; and (4) that out-of-town institutions accept very
few New Yorkers on the grounds that they give priority to
their local populations . 19 That most of this discrimination is
aimed against Jews cannot be denied. A similar pattern has
been revealed in Boston . 20 It is, indeed, amazing to note that
university officials have burned incriminating evidence in
their files on the eve of official inquiries into their admission
practices . 21

The Decennial Census of Jewish College Students, issued
on September 29, 1947, reveals that the proportion of Jew-
ish students enrolled in professional courses fell from 8.8
per cent in 1935 to 7 per cent in 1946. “The fact that Jews
go to college today in practically the same proportion as
eleven years ago,” the report states, “leads the vocational
service to believe that the decline in professional courses is
due, at least in part, to increased discrimination against
Jews in professional schools and departments.”

The discrimination against Jews as teachers and instruc-
tors has a significance which far transcends the individual
frustrations to which it gives rise. “It is a pedagogic truism,”

138 A Mask for Privilege

writes Maxwell H. Goldberg, “that the teacher transmits
attitudes, as well as facts and skills. . . . When, therefore,
in building up and maintaining their teaching staffs, school
executives and other authorities practice social discrimina-
tion or countenance its practice, the harm they do is many
times compounded. Directly, and via intermediate officials,
their biased policy and practice seep down into the body of
the teaching staff itself. Here, other discriminatory attitudes
are newly stimulated in teachers who may hitherto have
been free of them; or such attitudes are strengthened in
teachers who are already infected.” 22 Then, of course,
youngsters, taught by the example of their elders, carry the
lessons learned into their lives as adult members of the com-
munity. “Education for democratic living is thereby doubly
sabotaged at one of its main generators — the school.”

The real significance of quotas in the professional schools
consists in the fact that these quotas buttress the much more
significant discrimination against Jews in our economy.
While the evidence, here, is largely circumstantial, it is
nevertheless quite persuasive. A year or so ago, Dr. Albert
Sprague Coolidge of Harvard University testified before
a Massachusetts legislative committee that “we know per-
fectly well that names ending in ‘berg’ or ‘stein’ have to be
skipped by the board of selection of students for scholar-
ships in chemistry.” How did this curious practice arise at
Harvard University? Because, as Dr. Coolidge explained,
of “a gentlemen’s agreement” between university officials
and the chemical industry that sponsors the scholarships.
The chemical industry in ikmerica happens to be rigidly
exclusionist insofar as jews are concerned. It is perfectly
clear, therefore, that university practices in many cases

The System of Exclusion 139

have been brought into alignment with industrial practices.

While quotas have been more difficult to maintain in
dentistry than in medicine, the dental profession and the
schools in dentistry have been “alerted"’ to the danger of
unrestricted admission policies. In the December 1944 issue
of the Journal of Dental Education Dr. Harlan H. Horner,
secretary of the Council on Dental Education, argued that
“determined efforts should be made on a national scale to
counteract the trend toward marked racial and geographi-
cal imbalance in the entire group of dental students.”
Originally prepared as a “confidential report” to an ad-
visory body established by the House Committee on Edu-
cation, this article aroused a storm of protest. The 1944
proceedings of the American Association of Dental Schools
contains a passage deploring the tendency of students of
foreign birth “or near-foreign parentage” to seek admission
to dental schools. Still a third document, a report submitted
to Columbia University by the Council on Dental Educa-
tion, warns against “the excessive number of dental students
from one or two racial strains ... far in excess of the
ratio of such groups to the total population.” A similar
report was submitted also to the officials of New York
University. 2 *

While the deans of the dental schools were later advised
by the Council on Dental Education that the council was
“unequivocally opposed to the use of quotas for admissions
based on racial or religious lines ,” 24 this disclaimer came
only as a result of the furore which the Homer report had
aroused. Actually the report was published with the ap-
proval of the nine members of the Council on Dental
Education, which is made up of three members from the

140 A Mask for Privilege

American Dental Association, three from the American
Association of Dental Schools, and three from the American
Association of Dental Examiners. It must have represented,
therefore, something more significant than the personal
opinion of Dr. Horner. One wonders if the dentists have
ever suspected that a connection might exist between the
number of Jews seeking admission to dental schools and
the exclusion of Jews from a whole segment of American
business, industry, and finance. If they were realistic, the
dental associations should submit their protests, not to the
dental schools, but to the leaders of heavy industry in
America. Other professions are also being “alerted.” In
the January 1945 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psy-
chology, the editor proposed that admissions “of a certain
racial group,” later identified as Jews, to professional train-
ing in psychiatry be restricted in order to prevent this group
from “dominating” and “exploiting” the profession. Has
anyone ever complained that the Welsh should not be per-
mitted to “dominate” the coal mines of England or that
Negroes should not monopolize domestic service in the
United States?

The merits of the conventional arguments advanced to
defend the quota system will be discussed later; but the
facts presented in this section justify certain conclusions.
First coming to general public attention in the early
twenties, the quota system has now become a well-estab-
lished institutional practice. More pronounced in the East
than elsewhere, it has nevertheless tended to spread geo-
graphically and occupationally. Strikingly apparent in
medicine, it has also been established in other professions
and now exists in a fairly large number of liberal arts col-

The System of Exclusion 141

leges. Where quotas have been established, limitations have
tended to become increasingly severe. It is also clear that
quotas have been established in the free professions largely
because of the bar against the employment of Jews in the
key industries, as shown by the fact that the engineer ing
and technical schools have never bothered to establish
quotas. In fact the real basis for the quota system, as for
most forms of social discrimination, is to be found in the
structure of the dominant American industries.

chapter vi In the Middle
of the Middle Class

The forms of discrimination traced in the preceding chap-
ter are essentially reflections of a basic reality — the anoma-
lous position that Jews occupy in the American economy.
In itself this position constitutes the best evidence of a
strong underlying pattern of anti-Semitism in the United
States. Similarly the best proof of the mythical character of
the anti-Semitic ideology is to be found in an examination
of the position which Jews occupy in our economy. For
the notion that Jews dominate or control the American
economy is one of the greatest myths of our time.

1. THE MARGINAL MAN

The quickest way to define the position that Jews occupy
in the American economy is to mark off the fields in which
Jewish participation is nonexistent or of negligible im-
portance. This of course constitutes a reversal of the anti-
Semite’s technique, for he always starts by defining the
areas in which Jews play a prominent part. A brief examina-
tion of the Fortune survey (Jews in America, 1936) will
indicate, graphically enough, those sectors of the economy
in which Jewish participation is of negligible importance.

In the Middle of the Middle Class 143

Contrary to the ancient anti-Semitic myth, Jews are
a minor influence in banking and finance. Of the 420 listed
directors of the 19 members of the New York Clearing
House in 1933, only 33 were Jews. “There are practically
no Jewish employees of any kind,” reads the Fortune sur-
vey, “in the largest commercial banks — and this in spite
of the fact that many of their customers are Jews.” While
a few Jewish firms, such as Kuhn, Loeb & Company,
J. & W. Seligman & Company, and Speyer & Company,
have a well-established reputation in the investment bank-
ing field, Jewish influence in investment banking in the
United States is wholly insignificant. Neither in commercial
nor in investment banking are Jews an important factor. If
the national rather than the New York scene were examined
in detail, it could be demonstrated that Jewish influence in
American banking is even less significant than the Fortune
survey indicates. For the exclusion of Jews from the boards
of local banks, outside New York, is a fact that can be
readily verified by the most cursory investigation. In re-
lated fields of finance, such as insurance, the Jewish in-
fluence is virtually nonexistent. “The absence of Jews in the
insurance business,” to quote from the survey, “is note-
worthy.” Generally speaking, Jews participate in the in-
surance business almost exclusively as salesmen catering to
a preponderantly Jewish clientele. Nor do Jews figure, in
any significant manner, in the various stock exchanges
across the country.

If the Jewish participation in banking and finance is
negligible, it is virtually nonexistent in heavy industry.
There is not a single sector of the heavy industry front in
which their influence amounts to dominance or control or

144 A Mask for Privilege

in which it can even be regarded as significant. A minor ex-
ception might be noted in the scrap-iron and steel business,
an outgrowth of the junk business, which has been a
direct contribution of Jewish immigrants to the American
economy. The scrap-iron business, it should be emphasized,
is wholly peripheral to heavy industry in general. Similarly
the waste-products industry, including nonferrous scrap
metal, paper, cotton rags, wool rag, and rubber, is largely
Jewish controlled. But, here again, control of waste prod-
ucts is a symbol of exclusion rather than a badge of in-
fluence.

The following significant industries are all “equally non-
Jewish,” according to the Fortune survey, namely, coal,
auto, rubber, chemical, shipping, transportation, shipbuild-
ing, petroleum, aviation, and railroading. The important
priva'te utility field, including light and power, telephone
and telegraph, is most emphatically non- Jewish; and the
same can be said of lumber, agriculture, mining, dairy farm-
ing, food processing, and the manufacture of heavy ma-
chinery. So far as heavy industry is concerned, one can
best summarize the findings of the Fortune survey by say-
ing that Jews are the ragpickers of American industry, the
collectors of waste, the processors of scrap iron.

Jewish participation in the “light industries” field is
largely restricted to the distribution end. In the manu-
facture of wool, the Jewish influence is slight (from 5 to
10 per cent of production); somewhat higher in silk, it is
only 5 per cent in cotton. In the distribution of wool, silk,
and cotton products, however, Jews do play a significant
role. Their participation in the important meat-packing
industry is limited, as one might expect, to the production

In the Middle of the Middle Class 145

of the kosher meat pack. In a few industries, such as the
manufacture of furniture, they are an important factor. But
in most of the light industries, their numerical significance
is often greater than the volume of production which they
actually control. In the manufacture of boots and shoes,
for example, they are a 40 per cent minority in numbers
but control only 29 per cent of the volume of production.
In the entire light industries field, the principal exception
to the generally non-Jewish pattern of control is to be
found in the clothing industry, which, like the scrap busi-
ness, might properly be regarded as a Jewish contribution
to American industry.

While Jews play an important role in the buying of
tobacco and control some of the large cigar manufacturing
concerns, their participation in the mass production of
cigarettes, which is emphatically big business, is negligible.
Controlling about half the large distilling concerns, Jews
fall far short of outright control of the liquor industry. In
the general merchandizing field, the important fact to be
noted is that, with the exception of apparel goods, Jews
have been rigidly excluded from the various chain-store
enterprises. Jewish participation is virtually nonexistent
both in the drugstore chains and in the food distributing
chains. Woolworth and Kress, for example, are 95 per cent
non-Jewish. In the mail-order business, Montgomery-Ward
and Sears, Roebuck are both non-Jewish, although it was
Julius Rosenwald who built the latter company into the
great institution it is today. While some of the department
stores in New York and in the East are controlled by Jews,
their infl uence in this field diminishes as one moves west.

Again contrary to popular belief, Jewish participation

146 A Mask for Privilege

in publishing is not significant. In the magazine field, the
New Yorker, the American Mercury , and Esquire are about
the only magazines that are controlled by Jews. The
measure of Jewish influence in this field might, there-
fore, be estimated by comparing the circulation of these
publications with the circulation of such magazines as the
Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, the Woman’s Home
Companion, Good Housekeeping, Look, and Time, Life,
and Fortune. Jewish participation in the advertising field
is about 1 to 3 per cent of the total. However, they are a
fairly important factor in the book publishing business and
in the job-and-trade printing industry in the larger cities;
and, in two new industries, radio and motion pictures, their
influence is significant. “The whole picture of industry,
business, and amusements,” concludes the Fortune survey,
“may be summed up by repeating that while there are cer-
tain industries which Jews dominate and certain industries
in which Jewish participation is considerable, there are
also vast industrial fields, generally reckoned as the most
typical of our civilization, in which they play a part so
inconsiderable as not to count in the total picture.”

Ironically enough, the negligible influence of Jews in
American industry and finance is usually cited, as in the
Fortune survey, as proof that they do not control the
economy and therefore should not be regarded as a
“menace” by non-Jews. So much is, indeed, eloquently self-
evident. But what this same pattern also indicates is the
far more significant fact that Jews have been excluded from
participation in the basic industries of the country, the in-
dustries that exercise a decisive control over the entire
economy. It is precisely this pattern of exclusion from in-

In the Middle of the Middle Class 147

dustry and finance that one finds reflected in the pattern of
social exclusion traced in the preceding chapter. Since Jews
have been unable to penetrate entire segments of the Ameri-
can economy, it naturally follows that their concentration
in certain fields is a result, not a cause, of disc rimin ation.
“What is remarkable about Jews in America,” to quote
from the Fortune survey, “is not their industrial power but
their curious industrial distribution, their tendency to
crowd together in particular squares of the checkerboard.”
But to explain this concentration, as the Fortune survey
does, in terms of “psychological traits — their clannishness,
their tribal inclination” — is certainly to ignore economic
realities. One might with greater plausibility explain the
crowding together on the checkerboard in terms of the
tribal inclination of non-Jews. While certain cultural and
sociological factors have been influential in bringing about
the concentration of Jews in certain restricted fields of
economic endeavor, and also help to explain their associa-
tion together as Jews in these fields, the basic explanation
must be found in the systematic exclusion of Jews from
the dominant businesses and industries.

2. THE MARGINAL BUSINESS
Just what are the characteristics of these “particular
squares on the checkerboard” in which Jews are concen-
trated? Generally speaking, the businesses in which Jews are
concentrated are those in which a large risk-factor is in-
volved; businesses peripheral to the economy; businesses
ori ginall y regarded as unimportant; new industries and
businesses; and businesses which have traditionally carried

148 A Mask for Privilege

a certain element of social stigma, such, for example, as
the amusement industry and the liquor industry. Not being
able to penetrate the key control industries, Jews have been
compelled to occupy the interstitial, the marginal, positions
in the American economy. In short, it is the qualitative
rather than the quantitative aspect of their participation in
industry and finance that most graphically delineates their
position.

The fact that Jewish businesses are essentially marginal
in character has manifold collateral ramifications. It means,
for example, that the Jewish lawyer occupies somewhat the
same position in relation to the practice of the law that
Jewish businessmen occupy in relation to American busi-
ness. “The most important office law business in America,”
reads the Fortune survey, “such as the law business inci-
dental to banking, insurance, trust-company operation, in-
vestment work, railroading, patents, admiralty, and large
corporation matters in general is in the hands of non-Jewish
firms many of which, even though they have numerous
Jewish clients, have no Jewish partners.” The success or
failure of Jewish middle-class professional groups generally
is related to the success or failure of those businesses in
which Jews are a decisive or important influence. This
circumstance gives the appearance of Jewish exclusiveness
or clannishness to relationships which are primarily con-
ditioned by non-Jewish exclusiveness and clannishness.
Similarly, that Jews appear to wield more economic power
than they do is the result of an illusion created by their
concentration in businesses which make them conspicuous
and which place them in a direct relation to the consuming
public. Thus by and large the traditional European pattern

In the Middle of the Middle Class 149

of Jewish-Gentile economic relations has been repeated
in America.

Today the marginal economic position of the Jew is
more exposed in America than ever before. The structure
of American capitalism has been profoundly altered since
the first great waves of Jewish immigration in the eighties.
Today heavy industry holds the reins of power in the
United States, economically, politically, and socially. Our
great industrial systems have long since achieved complete
integration and the structure of power that they represent
is an established and formidable reality. No longer directly
dependent on finance capital, heavy industry nowadays
finances its operations out of its vast reserves and accumula-
tions. Generally speaking, Jewish businesses have been
“nepotistic, speculative, and otherwise old-fashioned in
comparison with the cartelized, impersonal industrial cor-
porations.” 1 Of 1939 sales in the United States, 87 per cent
by value of mineral products, 60 per cent of agricultural
products, and 42 per cent of manufactured products were
cartelized. Opportunities for the small-scale type of enter-
prise, in which Jews have long specialized, diminish in direct
relation to the growth of cartels and the rise of monopolies.

The types of business in which Jews are concentrated,
by their very nature, fail to invest ownership with social
power and prestige. Too often these businesses lack the
artisan beginnings, the long identification with certain
family names, and the intimate relationship to a particular
community that have invested so many American industries
and the families that control them with an extraordinary
social power. Clothing stores and motion picture theaters
are not nearly so impressive as mines and mills, factories

i5o A Mask for Privilege

and railroads. Some of the industries in which Jews have
prospered, such as radio and motion pictures, have been
exceptionally lucrative in their infancy precisely because
they were on the fringe of modern capitalism. By reason of
their lucky identification with these industries, originally
regarded as quite unimportant, some Jews have risen more
rapidly economically than they have socially or culturally.
These are, in Mr. Riesman’s phrase, “the flamboyant social
pariahs” to whose activities the anti-Semites devote so much
attention. But the economic “upstart,” the nouveau riche
type, has always been a product of similar conditions. “The
Newport millionaires,” writes Miriam Beard, “who enter-
tained with ‘monkey dinners’ and ‘bullfrog dinners’ were
not Jewish; neither were the Bradley-Martins and James
Hazen Hyde, whose fetes so shocked American public
opinion. Gentiles, not Jews, exhibited the most grotesque
eccentricities in the Gilded Age .” 2 As these new businesses
have come to be recognized as a “good thing,” they have
been quickly stabilized by familiar economic processes and
the upstarts have gradually been displaced by men “of sound
judgment.” Today, for example, Jewish influence in both
radio and motion pictures is on the wane.

The steadily growing power which industrial groups
have come to exercise in our society not only weakens such
economic power as the Jews possess, but it also weakens
the position of their allies, the liberal-minded elements of
the non- Jewish middle class. Both in Germany and in the
United States, the heavy industry groups have tended to
be extremely reactionary in politics: protagonists of high
tariffs, bitter opponents of organized labor, advocates of a
blatantly nationalistic foreign policy. The nature of heavy

In the Middle of the Middle Class 15 1

industry tends to insulate its owners and managers from
direct contact with, or dependence upon, public opinion.
As Mr. Riesman points out, the heavy industry groups have
everywhere shown a marked sympathy with the anti-
Semitic rationalization of “productive” versus “predatory”
capital. It is not by chance, therefore, that Henry Ford,
once the most influential American anti-Semite, should have
been smitten with this distinction or that he should have
inveighed so strenuously against “international finance,”
“Wall Street,” and “the bankers.” As the leaders of heavy
industry become increasingly preoccupied with the neces-
sity of acquiring a direct control over government — a
tendency already most pronounced in the United States —
political power tends to merge with industrial power. This
tendency has universally marked, if not the end, the be-
ginning of the end, of that happy period of bourgeois
liberalism in which the Jews have flourished and pros-
pered.

3. THE MARGINAL CLASS

Measured in quantitative terms, Jews constitute a mar-
ginal class in American society; socio-economically speak-
ing, they are in the middle of the middle class. “Of one
hundred Jews gainfully employed in the United States,”
writes Nathan Reich, “between thirty-five and forty draw

their sustenance from commercial occupations; between

fifteen and twenty from manufacturing industries; some
ten or twelve from the professions; and the remainder are

scattered among personal services, transportation, con-

struction trades and other occupations.” 3 * * * * 8 For the general

152 A Mask for Privilege

population the corresponding figures are: trade, 13.8 per
cent; manufacturing industries, 26.3 per cent; professional
services, 6.8 per cent. The trading group, among Jews, is
almost three times larger than the national average; the
Jewish professional group is about twice the national
average; while the number of Jews in manufacturing falls
below the national figure. Claiming 17.5 per cent of all
gainfully occupied Americans, agriculture absorbs only
about 1 per cent of the gainfully occupied Jews. A large
section of American Jewry is, therefore, concentrated in
the lower, middle, and upper middle class. This concentra-
tion could be more strikingly indicated if the New York
situation could be isolated from the national scene. For
example, the “Yankee City” investigations of Dr. Lloyd
Warner indicated that almost half of the Jewish families in
Yankee City belonged to the middle class. It would be wide
of the mark, however, to say that most Jews belong to the
middle class, for the facts show that they constitute a
special element within the middle class.

Sociologists have long called attention to a tendency
on the part of ethnic groups to concentrate in particular
occupational fields. 4 Related to the cultural backgrounds
of the various groups, this tendency represents an aspect
of cultural specialization and also, of course, of group
discrimination. The Italian who was a bricklayer or stone-
mason in the Old World naturally gravitated to the same
type of work in America. But the tendency is also, in
some respects, an aspect of the interrelations that have
existed between immigrant groups. Heavy Jewish immigra-
tion to the United States coincided with heavy non- Jewish
immigration from the same or adjacent regions. Many of
the Jewish immigrants were traders or the sons of traders,

In the Middle of the Middle Class 15 y

familiar by tradition with the ways of commerce and the
techniques of trade. For generations Jews had filled the
function of a middle class in relation to the peasants of
Central and Southeastern Europe. Thus the mass immigra-
tion of peasants from these areas to the United States
created a special opportunity for Jews to rise rapidly into
the middle-class category by performing the same functions
here that they had long performed in Europe for the same
groups. The existence of this special opportunity vis-a-vis
non- Jewish immigrants, coupled with their exclusion from
other fields and the circumstance that they were late arrivals
on the American scene, accounts for the striking economic
concentration of American Jews in the middle-class cate-
gory-

The conjunction of Jewish with non-Jewish immigration
also accounts, in large measure, for the rapid rise of Jewish
immigrants in social status. For example, Dr. Warner found
that the Jews of Yankee City had climbed the status ladder
faster than any other ethnic group, including groups that
had been in the city for one or two generations longer than
the Jews. 5 This remarkable upper mobility on the part of
Jewish immigrants has tended to create toward them a dual
hostility: on the part of the non-Jewish “native” middle
class and on the part of those immigrant groups who have
been slow in developing their own middle class. Further-
more this hostility is likely to increase as the pressure of
monopoly undermines the security of the native-born
middle class and as the other immigrant groups, such as
the Poles, verge on middle-class status. The nub of the mat-
ter, as Jacob Lestchinsky has pointed out, consists in the
fact that the Jews “have quite naturally taken, so to speak,
a redundant position between the Anglo-Saxon and the

154 A Mask for Privilege

other ethnic groups.” It is this special or “in-between” po-
sition of the Jews that constitutes their particular peril in
the United States. In the past, Jews have experienced com-
paratively little competition since, as Lestchinsky notes,
“they largely occupied positions left over by the British-
Americans and other dominant groups”; but today both
prongs of a pincers movement can be seen encircling their
exposed position.

.Various economic factors, in the past, have tended to
protect the Jews, as a group, against competition. The
Jewish immigration from 1900 to 1925 included propor-
tionately more workers than did the early waves of im-
migration in the period from 1880 to 1900. Since large
numbers of these workers went directly into the needle
trades in New York as other groups were leaving these
trades for more profitable employment, direct group com-
petition was kept at a minimum. But the decline of Jews
in the needle trades, which began in 1919, has tended to
eliminate the protected industrial position of Jewish work-
ers. As S. M. Melamed has pointed out, “in the tailor shop
the Jewish working man competed with no one else. But
when he leaves the shop and invades the field of the re-
tailer, the peddler, the promoter or the real estate man, he
will tread upon somebody’s com.” 6 It is perhaps not a
mere coincidence, therefore, that the date on which Jew-
ish employment began to decline in the pivotal needle
trades should have also marked a sharp rise in anti-Semitism
in the United States.

The “peculiarities” of the position occupied by Jews in
the American economy has probably occasioned more con-

In the Aliddle of the Middle Class 155

cem and comment among Jews than any single aspect of
their experience in this country. Literally hundreds of
panel discussions and conferences have been devoted to
the perennial topic of whether there is or is not a peculiar
“Jewish econoipic crisis” in the United States. Quite often
the discussion has turned on the related question of whether
the Jewish economic position is really “abnormal.” Those
who have sought to read an optimistic meaning in events
have naturally rationalized these “peculiarities” and “ab-
normalities” of the Jewish economic position. And there is
of course a sense in which it is quite true that there is
nothing peculiar or abnormal about the position that Jews
occupy in the economy. For example, the fact that Jews
occupy a peculiar position in the economy does not prove
that Jews are essentially different from other people. But
considerations of this order should not be permitted to
conceal the obvious fact that there is something most pe-
culiar and abnormal about the American economic struc-
ture— namely, its markedly anti-Semitic bias. More than
any other single factor it is this bias which has brought
about the peculiar distribution of Jews on the checkerboard
of our economic system.

That this distribution is somewhat peculiar cannot be
denied. If professional and white-collar workers are in-
cluded in the middle-class category, then this class consti-
tutes the overwhelming majority of American Jews. As,
Lestchinsky has written:

Even if we should classify the white collar workers among
the proletariat, the wage earning element among Jews would
still be only half as large as among the American population in

1 56 A Mask for Privilege

general. Seventy per cent of the economically active popula-
tion in the country are wage-earners; among Jews this group
constitutes only about forty per cent. Furthermore, while
seventy per cent of all wage workers among non- Jews are
engaged in physical work and only about thirty per cent in
clerical office work, this proportion is reversed among Jews.
Since Jewish white collar workers are mostly connected with
mercantile rather than with industrial enterprises, it is not sur-
prising that they are actually and psychologically closer to the
middle class. A large part of them eventually leave the prole-
tarian status altogether, the women after marriage and the men
through setting up in some business independently . 7

Once the class position of American Jews is thus defined,
the situation, as Lestchinsky notes, “is not likely to arouse
optimistic thoughts.”

In fact, the economic impasse which Jews now face in
America is remarkably similar to that which they faced in
Europe prior to the Second World War. The steady con-
centration of wealth and economic power in modem indus-
trial nations has been, as Maurice Samuel has written, both
the nemesis of capitalism and the nemesis of the Jew . 8 As
this concentration progresses, the amount of the national
income left for the middle class, after monopoly has ex-
tracted its share, becomes the prize of an ever-fiercer
struggle. The exposed economic position of the Jew is then
subject to increased pressure from three directions: from
above (monopoly); from below (the working class); and
from within the middle class itself. The peril of the Jew,
as Waldo Frank has so well said, consists in the fact that
he is allied with “an agonizing and desperate middle class.
Whenever that class flourished, the Jews, functioning in it,
were tolerated by it. Now that it droops and its spoils

In the Middle of the Middle Class 157

dwindle, it turns — like a threatened beast — against its
weaker neighbor.”

To gain a realistic understanding of the economic basis
of anti-Semitism in the United States we badly need studies
of the relationships between Jews and non-Jews engaged in
similar lines of business in the same community. In the
city of Los Angeles, for example, the credit end of the
retail jewelry business is largely controlled by Jews, while
the “cash” stores are just as exclusively non-Jewish. Since
both risk and losses are greater in the credit stores, these
stores must emphasize volume of sales and to increase vol-
ume they are driven to cut prices. On the other hand, the
concentration of Jews in the credit end of the business
operates to the indirect profit and advantage of the non-
Jewish cash stores. In fact, some of these stores use anti-
Semitism as a form of advertising. If a customer objects
to the price of an article, they can always say, “Well, you
can buy it cheaper, if that’s what you want, at the kike
store down the street.” By emphasizing their non-Jewish-
ness, these stores create a premium value for their mer-
chandise. That the Jews are forced to operate the marginal
stores, the stores that are compelled to offer credit in order
to exist, also means that they are forced to fight harder to
maintain their position and that, in doing so, they are often
accused of sharp practices and high-pressure methods, ac-
cusations which are in turn used against them by their non-
Jewish competitors. The non-Jewish stores are naturally
delighted with an arrangement which enables them to mo-
nopolize the cream of the business and to escape, in effect,
from the necessity of direct competition with their Jew-
ish colleagues who have been relegated to the outer fringes

158 A Mask for Privilege

of the trade. It is in relationships of this sort, seldom ap-
parent on the face of things, that much of the economic
reality of anti-Semitism is to be found.

Much of the job discrimination that Jews encounter in
the United States today reflects a determination on the part
of the majority to keep certain sectors of the economy in
non-Jewish hands. The toughest resistance which Jewish
job seekers encounter is precisely in those concerns which
traditionally have been non-Jewish in ownership and man-
agement. For example, Jews have always experienced great
difficulty in securing office or clerical employment in insur-
ance companies 9 and in private utilities. 10 The effect of this
“closed shop” attitude on the part of the industrial and fi-
nancial giants is to intensify the pressure of Jewish appli-
cants for jobs in those businesses which have always pur-
sued a less systematic policy of exclusion, to become small
enterprisers, or to enter the professions.

That discrimination against Jews in employment has
been steadily increasing since V-J Day has been clearly
established by a number of recent studies. In the period
from February 20 to March 20, 1946, one study indicates
that three Philadelphia newspapers carried over 3600 help-
wanted ads containing discriminatory specifications. A
study by the National Community Relations Advisory
Council indicates that discriminatory help-wanted adver-
tisements showed an increase of 195 per cent in the year
following V-J Day; that 93 per cent more complaints of
employment discrimination were filed with Jewish agencies
in the six months following V-J Day than in the corre-
sponding period for the previous year; that of 241 private
employment agencies interviewed, 89 per cent required ap-

In the Middle of the Middle Class 159

plicants to state their religion and lineage; and that 60 per
cent of Jewish job seekers had been asked about their re-
ligion at the time they were interviewed for employment.
It is significant that the situation in New York, where a
state FEPC has been in force for some time, was noticeably
better than in other cities. This study, incidentally, covered
15 large cities in which 80 per cent of the Jewish popula-
tion resides. 11

4. ECONOMIC PRESSURES AND GROUP DIFFERENCES

Economic pressures aggravate group differences in nu-
merous ways. A minority that is subject to incessant eco-
nomic pressure and to various forms of economic discrim-
ination can hardly be said to enjoy freedom of religious
worship despite the fact that there is no overt interference
with this right. For pressures of this sort invest the pro-
fession of a particular faith with special disabilities, thereby
placing it at a considerable disadvantage by comparison
with other faiths. As the economic pressures mount, reli-
gious differences begin to take on a new significance and
serious inroads are made on the concept of religious lib-
erty.

That religious differences are being accentuated today
despite an elaborate effort to keep up a pretense of inter-
religious amity and brotherhood can hardly be denied.
Worried by the growing strength of Catholicism, the
Protestant churches have been stressing their Protestantism
in a manner that serves to sharpen the differences not only
between Catholics and Protestants but between Protestants
and Jews. The recent decision of the Supreme Court ap-

160 A Mask for Privilege

proving the use of state funds to transport children to
parochial schools is not likely to allay this heightened sense
of group differences in matters of religious faith. Such
recent developments as the “released time” religious educa-
tion program in the public schools have also had a tendency
to emphasize religious differences and, at the same time, to
create subtle pressures against minority religious groups. 12
That these pressures are increasing today would seem to
indicate that economic pressures against minorities are
being intensified. For a group that is not permitted to de-
velop its own religious institutions in its own way, free
from pressures of the sort mentioned, is almost invariably
a group that is being singled out for economic discrimina-
tion.

Merely to indicate how religious differences are being
emphasized, I would refer to the bad-tempered and thought-
less polemic in which even that liberal Protestant journal
the Christian Century engaged some years ago. In one of a
series of editorials devoted to “the Jewish Problem,” the
Century charged that “fundamentally anti-semitism arises
out of the Jew’s unwillingness to submit himself to the dem-
ocratic process” and proceeded to explain anti-Semitism in
terms of “the Jew’s immemorial and pertinacious obsession
with an illusion,” namely, his sense of difference based
upon the character of his religion and its culture. 13 This is,
of course, arrogant nonsense. There is nothing about the
“democratic process” that requires the Jew to abandon his
religion or that even requires him, as part of the ethics of
religious sportsmanship, to listen to the missionaries of other
faiths. If it is not to be utterly robbed of meaning, the con-
cept of religious freedom must include the right to foster

In the Middle of the Middle Class 161

any type of faith which, in the words of Rabbi Mordecai
Kaplan, “offers consolation or supports the human spirit”
and to be free of economic penalties or disabilities arising
from adherence to such a faith.

To urge the contrary is to negate the meaning of de-
mocracy as well as of religious freedom. “Can anything be
more disgusting,” wrote George Eliot, “than to hear people
called ‘educated’ making small jokes about eating ham, and
showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the
relation of their own social and religious life to the history
of the people they think themselves witty in insulting?
They hardly know that Christ was a Jew. And I find men,
educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feel-
ing, this deadness to world history which has prepared half
of our world for us, this inability to find interest in any
form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and
flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of
irreligion. The best that can be said is that it is a sign of
intellectual narrowness — in plain English, the stupidity,
which is still the average mark of our culture.”

Paradoxically, religious tensions are mounting at a time
when secular influences were never more pronounced in
our culture. It is the general crisis of the times, however,
that is producing this heightening of religious tensions just
as it is emphasizing group differences of all types. The fact
that synagogues were desecrated in a dozen or more Amer-
ican cities in 1946, and that some thirty anti-Semitic acts
of violence were reported in New York in the last half of
1945, merely indicates how group differences are being
aggravated today.

CHAPTER VII

The Jewish

Stereotype

For many years now, the social scientists have been debat-
ing whether anti-Semitism is a unique phenomenon or
merely another manifestation of prejudice. In other words,
is there something about the nature of anti-Semitism that
warrants its inclusion in a separate and special category or
is it to be regarded . under the same head, for example, as
prejudice against Negroes? The question is not one of
purely academic interest for it bears directly upon the ques-
tion of prognosis and therapy. While disavowing any in-
tention of entering this debate on one side or the other, I
do want to suggest that the clue to the riddle is to be found
in the nature of the Jewish stereotype.

1. SOCIAL MYTHS

A stereotype has been defined, in the social sciences, as
a judgment that does not coincide with the facts; it is in the
nature of a social illusion or myth. Social structures that are
marked by sharp class, caste, or status lines are fertile breed-
ing grounds for stereotypes, since it is the function of
stereotypes to rivet certain alleged traits and characteristics
upon all members of a group or class. Thus, all Negroes are

The Jewish Stereotype 163

lazy and the exceptions acknowledged are merely used to
prove the rule. When racial and ethnic stereotypes are stud-
ied on a comparative basis, one is immediately impressed
with their extraordinary similarity. If these stereotypes
were actually based upon personal observation and expe-
rience, then one would expect to find a wide range of va-
riation in the characteristics attributed to certain groups.
But such is not the case. When the stereotype of the Irish
first arose in Boston, it was essentially similar to the present-
day stereotype of the Negro. If the labels are omitted, it
is almost impossible to identify the groups involved without
reference to the social context in which the particular stere-
otype appears. This telltale similarity in stereotypes should
be a sufficient warning that they are essentially illusions
and that their origin is to be found in social rather than
individual experience.

All stereotypes, however, are not the same. A basic dis-
tinction is to be noted, for example, between the Negro
stereotype and the Jewish stereotype. The Negro stereo-
type runs somewhat as follows: the group is lazy, shiftless,
irresponsible, dirty, can’t leam and won’t work, competes
unfairly, lowers living standards and property values, has
excessively large families, and is “incapable of assimila-
tion.” This is the basic stereotype of subordinated groups.
It has been applied with amusing uniformity to literally
dozens of different racial, cultural, and ethnic groups. For
example, one could not distinguish the stereotype of the
Polish worker which developed in Germany in the latter
part of the last century from the stereotype of the Negro
which exists in the United States today. This same basic
stereotype was developed in California, in the years from

164 A Mask for Privilege

1933 to 1938, in reference to the so-called Okies and Arkies,
who were uniformly white, painfully Protestant, and over-
whelmingly Anglo-Saxon in ancestry. The very groups
and individuals in California who had supported Madison
Grant in the fight to enact the Immigration Act of 1924
were the first groups and individuals to apply the “non-
Nordic” stereotype to the Nordic Okies and Arkies.

The Jewish stereotype is to be sharply distinguished from
the Negro stereotype in two respects. In the first place, the
Jew is universally damned, not because he is lazy, but be-
cause he is too industrious; not because he is incapable of
learning, but because he is too intelligent — that is, too
knowing and cunning. It should be noted, however, that
the Jewish stereotype has been applied to such non-Jewish
groups as Japanese Americans, Greeks, Syrians, and Ar-
menians. In the Philippine Islands much the same stereo-
type has developed about the Chinese, who are the retail
merchants of the islands. From the difference in the two
stereotypes it is readily apparent, therefore, that different
social situations are being rationalized and that, insofar as
Jews are concerned, a different relationship must prevail
between majority and minority than in the case of Negroes.

The rise of industrialism has everywhere stimulated mi-
gration. Since factories were initially located near sources
of power and power was not easily transmitted, industry
tended to be concentrated in particular areas. The rapid
expansion of industry quickly exhausted the local labor
market and created a powerful magnet by which new
groups were attracted to the centers of industrial employ-
ment. In seeking out the social origins of stereotypes, it
will generally be found that migration has been a factor.

The Jewish Stereotype 165

Usually the stereotyped groups have moved from a back-
ward to a more advanced area; from an area of lower to an
area of higher economic organization; from a technologi-
cally retarded to a more advanced region. This has meant,
in most cases, that the last group to arrive on the industrial
scene has usually suffered from certain cultural handicaps,
notably from a deficit in industrial, skills. As a consequence,
the last group to arrive has usually been fitted into the in-
dustrial hierarchy at the lowest rung, in the least skilled
and lowest paid categories.

In areas where a rapid industrial expansion has occurred,
the “native” groups, those on the scene when the expansion
began, have usually enjoyed marked advantages in com-
petition with later arrivals: the advantage of priority in
settlement, of early training in industrial processes, of
“being in on the ground floor” so as to capitalize upon the
myriad subsidiary economic opportunities which an ex-
panding industry creates. It was not by reason of any
biological superiority, therefore, that the founders of the
basic American industries in the post-Civil-War period
should have been largely white, Anglo-Saxon, and Prot-
estant. Their pre-eminence in industry and finance simply
cannot be explained in terms of their racial origin, nor,
Max Weber to the contrary, can it be correlated with the
Protestant ethic. This correlation between social status
and ethnic background, however, can be related to the rapid
westward expansion of the United States. Madison Grant
was to some extent right when he pointed out that it was
largely the native stock that pushed through the Cumber-
land Gap, overran the prairie states, swept into Texas and
westward to the Pacific. For the dynamics of expansion at-

1 66 A Mask for Privilege

tracted large numbers of the native-born westward at a time
when industry was ravenously seeking new employees in
the industrial centers of the East. It was this attraction of
western opportunities, rather than, as Grant supposed, the
innate reluctance of the native-born to accept certain types
of work, that created the vacuum in industrial employment
filled by the foreign-bom.

New migrant groups attracted to industrial centers usu-
ally suffer from specific competitive disabilities in addition
to their lack of industrial experience. Differences in nation-
ality and language, culture and religion, are often factors
marking off the new group from those already on the scene.
In the expansion of American industry, these differences
became more important as the center of recruitment shifted
from Northern and Western to Central and Southeastern
Europe. And this shift in origin happened to coincide with
the increased stratification of the industrial population that
came with the development of combines, trusts, and mo-
nopolies. Thus the most dissimilar cultural groups began
to arrive in the largest numbers precisely when the indus-
trial system had begun to mature and when the new status
system which it created had become well established.

Once the new migrant group has been fitted into the
lower-bracket employments, every group on the industrial
ladder above these levels begins to feel that it has a vested
interest in maintaining the new relationship. This feeling
extends to the top management and ownership groups, who
frequently lend the prestige of their names and the power of
their positions to the circulation of the stereotype which
promptly develops about “the last group in.” In other
words, the stereotype rationalizes the new group relation-

The Jezvish Stereotype 167

ship, not as temporary and fortuitous, but as permanent
and inherent. In fact it is frequently contended that God,
in His celestial ordering of the universe, decreed that the
new group should forever be the servants of their masters.
The new group is “only fit for” certain types of work. It
cannot be trained for better jobs because it is inherently
inferior; nor can its members be promoted because they
are, as a group, shiftless, lazy, and irresponsible. Since in-
dustry constantly recruited new groups, the older groups
naturally came to look upon each new group as a threat
to their position and status and developed a marked hos-
tility to immigration in general. Hence the moment rela-
tionships of this order began to develop in industry, the
most powerful economic factors immediately re-enforced
the initial stereotype and in effect perpetuated it.

The conditions of industrial employment, moreover,
create powerful psychological re-enforcements for group
stereotypes. Stratification in employment brings about a
strong in-group feeling among the workers in particular
categories. Cliques are formed in industry which tend to
carry over into the world outside the plant. Feeling that
the newest groups are the most likely competitors for their
jobs, the groups who have already developed a vested inter-
est in the industrial hierarchy tend to look with suspicion
and hostility on all groups occupying positions subordinate
to theirs. If the groups above the lowest rung on the ladder
really believed that the newest groups were “incapable of
assimilation,” they would not fear them as competitors.
But the rationalization invariably takes this form, since it
serves to maintain the relationship by assigning a perma-
nent and biological inferiority to potential competitors.

i68

A Mask for Privilege

Once relationships of this sort have been established, they
become institutionalized in the social structure of the plant
and the community and of the larger society of which both
are a part. The stereotype about the new group becomes
imbedded in company policy and is perpetuated through
personnel practices. The very nature of the relationships
out of which the stereotype arises tends to create a vicious
circle which perpetuates the stereotype. Since the new
groups lack training for superior positions, for which they
are regarded as inherently unfitted, it naturally follows that
they are “unqualified” when openings in these categories
arise. Furthermore, if members of the newest groups are
promoted, their advancement is likely to disturb all the re-
lationships which gave rise to the stereotype. Persons liv-
ing in an atmosphere conditioned by such relationships
come to accept the stereotype as part of the natural order
of the universe. It never occurs to them that the stereotype
might be a social illusion, for it seems to square with an un-
mistakable reality. They knovo that older women can’t
learn; that Negroes are lazy; and that Mexicans can’t handle
machines. For, in most cases, they have never seen a Mexi-
can given the chance to operate a machine nor have they
seen Negroes employed under circumstances which would
give them some reason to hope that diligence might lead
to advancement.

It goes without saying that relationships of this sort are
often looked upon with high favor by the ownership and
management groups, since invidious social arrangements
of this order create a dog-eat-dog atmosphere and a strenu-
ous competition for place and position. When a trade-
union movement emerges from such an atmosphere, its

The Jewish Stereotype 169

policies will often reflect these same relationships and
stereotypes. Thus the American Federation of Labor was
lined up with Madison Grant in the fight to pass the Im-
migration Act of 1924.

If maintained over a sufficiently long period, a set of
relationships of this sort and the stereotypes to which they
give rise can become deeply imbedded in the culture. The
stereotypes appear in story, novel, verse, song, and play.
They become part of the vocabulary of the culture. Chil-
dren are familiarized with the stereotypes in doggerel
verses, epithets, offhand remarks, and in the attitudes, ex-
pressions, and mannerisms of their elders. Cultural re-
enforcements are of the greatest importance in maintaining
the stereotype, since they operate continuously and uni-
formly in every section of the society. Thus even the
groups subordinated come to accept, to some extent, the
stereotype which is used to keep them in place. Further-
more, these same relationships have far-reaching implica-
tions in the world outside the plant. They determine, to a
large degree, the type of residential district in which the
worker lives, the type of school which his children attend
and the social atmosphere in which they live, and so on
through layer after layer of interacting influences.

And here sociology and psychology move hand in hand,
for the monotony of many types of industrial work breeds
frustrations which the hierarchical character of the rela-
tionships in an industrial society direct toward predeter-
mined scapegoats. “As long as this type of group education
and group life is tied to an extremely hierarchical form of
society,” writes Dr. Max Horkheimer, “the prevalent re-
pressive features of our society make these groups (those

i7o A Mask for Privilege

subordinated) more irrational than they would be even in
a society without social and economic injustices.” 1 Hence
the folly of talking about group differences as though these
differences were per se a primary cause of group tensions.

It should be pointed out, however, that while migration
stimulated by industrial expansion has been an important
factor in the growth of stereotyped group judgments, it is
not an indispensable factor. Nor is it essential that the group
stereotyped should be a numerical minority. Where a
minority has taken possession of a territory by superior
force and has imposed a new economic and industrial order
upon the native majority, the same relationships have often
developed and the same stereotypes have frequently flour-
ished. A case in point is that of the French Canadians in
Quebec, numerically a majority in the Province but suffer-
ing from every disability usually associated with minority
status. In fact, the forms and the techniques of group dom-
inance are many and varied but they are alike in the sense
that one group or combination of groups is always seeking
dominance over other groups. Migration has been, however,
an important factor in this process even prior to the rise
of industrialism.

2 . THE JEW AS MIGRANT
Jews have always been among the most mobile of peoples.
Their mobility has been a product of numerous well-
known factors: the lack of nationality status and citizen-
ship; a high degree of urbanization; a lack of ties to rural
areas; the lack of a homeland; the possession of certain tra-
ditional skills in trading and mercantile enterprises; and

The Jewish Stereotype 17 1

the discrimination which they have encountered wherever
they have resided. Members of minority groups tend to
emigrate more readily than members of dominant major-
ities and Jews have everywhere been a minority. Unlike
most migrant groups, however, the Jews have usually
brought a higher cultural endowment to the areas in which
they have settled than that possessed by the resident groups.
It would be more accurate, perhaps, to state that while their
cultural endowment has not necessarily been “higher” it
has been characterized by the possession of certain specific
skills and experience. Also unlike some migrant groups,
Jews have often brought considerable capital to the areas
in which they have settled. On more than one occasion,
Jews have been invited to settle in a particular community
or nation precisely because they have possessed the capital
or the skills, or both, which have enabled them to discharge
the function of a middle class. 2

Even in those cases where the Jews have been among the
“last groups in” — as in the United States — they have lost
little time in moving out of the lower bracket employments.
Schooled in facing prejudice, they have learned to seek out
the crevices, the marginal businesses, in which it has been
possible to secure an economic foothold. I have already
commented upon the quickness with which, by comparison
with other immigrant groups, Jewish immigrants have
moved up the status ladder in the United States. The posi-
tions which they eventually come to occupy, however, are
neither at the bottom nor at the top of the ladder but are
intermediate between both extremes and usually marginal
to the economy itself. Hence the determination to sub-
ordinate them, to keep them in their comer, cannot take the

172 A Mask for Privilege

usual form of rationalization. Obviously it would never do
to say that Jews are lazy or that they are ignorant, for their
skill at escaping subordination belies the judgment. The
same consideration underlies the fact, noted by many ob-
servers, that the Jews, unlike most minority groups, are
generally regarded as equals; in fact, they are regarded as
dangerous precisely because they are viewed as equals. Thus
a special stereotype is evolved which condemns the Jew,
not because he is lazy but because he is too industrious; not
because he is ignorant or incapable of learning, but because
he is too cunning, too successful in escaping subordination.

There is nothing miraculous or uncanny about the social
traits or skills which have enabled Jews to rise so quickly
from the positions of extreme subordination. Bom of dis-
crimination, these skills are socially, not biologically, con-
ditioned, and cannot be regarded as inborn “traits” or “char-
acteristics.” In an essay on “The Intellectual Pre-eminence
of Jews in Modem Europe,” published in 1919, Thorstein
Veblen advanced one of the most persuasive hypotheses to
account for the existence of these social skills among Jews.
As an alien, he reasoned, the Jew is born into a community
with traditions different from those to be found in the Gen-
tile community. From the day of his birth, he has the ad-
vantage (or disadvantage, however it be regarded) of oc-
cupying a detached position in relation to the culture of
the Gentile world. The extent of this detachment, of
course, has been a variable factor, depending upon the so-
cial distance between the two communities at any particu-
lar time or place. When the Jew discovers that his own
traditions do not square with the world into which he has
been bom, he also discovers that the Gentile’s traditions are

The Jewish Stereotype 173

neither better nor more pertinent. Once free from the pre-
conceptions of both cultures, he often becomes a creative
leader in the world’s intellectual enterprises. Thus of 38
Germans who won Nobel Prizes prior to 1933, 11 were
German Jews. According to the Veblen hypothesis, the
intellectually gifted Jew, like other men in a similar posi-
tion, secures immunity from intellectual quietism “at the
cost of losing his secure place in the scheme of conventions
into which he has been bom.” At the same time, he is “in a
peculiar degree exposed to the unmediated facts of the cur-
rent situation” and “takes his orientation from the run of
the facts as he finds them, rather than from the traditional
interpretation of analogous facts.” s

While Veblen may have overstated this theory, it does
help to explain an acknowledged social reality. Long con-
tinued social ostracism has two closely interrelated conse-
quences for the groups ostracized: it makes for the de-
velopment of strong family and group solidarity (often an
advantage in a competitive society); and it also forces the
group to seek out new and often hazardous or socially stig-
matized avenues for advancement. The term “marginal
trading peoples” has been coined to describe such groups.
Other religious minorities, such as the Quakers and the
Huguenots, have shown much the same success in escaping
subordination that the Jews have shown and for much the
same reasons. “The exile,” writes Miriam Beard, “thinks
of the future, not the past. He is shaken out of the common
and old habits; forced to seek new lands, to five on the out-
skirts of society, pioneering in young trades or transplanting
old ones. . . . Quakers pioneered in England in chem-
icals, chocolate manufacture, scientific brewing, and rail-

174 A Mask for Privilege

roading, all branches not pre-empted by good Anglicans;
the amalgamation of Quaker dynasties formed London’s
first great banking combine. One might pursue the theme
in America, showing how Quakers ran Salem and Provi-
dence — centers of the young rum-molasses-and-slave trade.
Huguenots, experimenting with textiles or false teeth (like
Paul Revere), overran New England; Huguenot money-
lenders ruled Charleston. . . . Wherever possible, all these
exiles avoided duplicating the efforts of natives among
whom they settled .” 4 While such exiles have “avoided”
trespassing on pre-empted fields, they have also been sys-
tematically excluded from these fields. That the opposition
to Quakers and Huguenots was often as violent as the most
extreme manifestations of anti-Semitism is a fact eloquently
attested by the history of both groups. Generally speaking,
however, the resistance to Jews has been much higher since
it has been conditioned by a much more complex set of
factors and by a much longer history.

Real light is thrown on the origin of specialized group
skills by a concept which Toynbee has developed, namely,
“the impact of penalization.” Consider, for example, the fol-
lowing characterization of a group, from Paul H. Emden’s
Money Powers of Europe:

Exposed to long persecution for their religion’s sake and ac-
customed to look upon harsh treatment as a tribulation without
offering — or indeed being able to offer — any great resistance,
they went through a hard school for many generations and
learnt calm and prudence. Prejudice on the part of others ex-
cluded them from the liberal professions, even from sport, and
their own objections to taking an oath which was in conflict
with their convictions rendered them incapable of holding even

The Jewish Stereotype 175

the most unimportant office. ... In view of their pariah po-
sition, the inherited gifts and the education of their children
were concentrated solely on religion and business; nothing
could keep them from the practices of their faith, and no pros-
pective profit, however high, could influence them when hour
of the Sabbath called to worship. The same high standard which
ruled their private and intimate family life governed their
business transactions, and their principles precluded expensive
tastes. They were intelligent, diligent, and above all — for this
is the inheritance of a persecuted sect — cautious. The habit of
having always to be prepared for anything compelled them to
exercise the greatest possible prudence, and consequently to be
constantly solvent, a quality 1 indispensable in a manager of
other people’s money. Inculcated self-restraint and discretion
turned them into reliable advisers on financial secrets and good
merchants. In constant activity they were ever on the lookout
for new possibilities of extending their business; they did not
wait for the customer to come to them; they sought him out
or sent to him, and in this way, by stages, the fraternity of
commercial travellers came into being. Trade, commerce, in-
dustry and traffic received new ideas from them, and they
found large sums for the purpose of carrying them into prac-
tice. . . .For children to marry outside the faith was not a
very frequent occurrence; any one so doing deliberately ex-
cluded himself from close communion and inter-marriage pre-
vented the dissolution of great wealth. In this way vast for-
tunes were made solely by accumulation.

This description of the origin of certain skills so neatly
fits the Jews that one would assume that Emden was writing
about them. Actually he is writing about the Quakers and
how it was that they became an important element in the
financial life of Great Britain. There is a wealth of similar
evidence to show that the possession of group skills of this
kind is a by-product of penalization. This historical evi-

176 A Mask for Privilege

dence merely fortifies a basic conclusion of modem social
science that character is rooted in social structure. “Instincts
and racially (i.e. genetically) determined properties,” writes
Harold Orlansky, “do not explain why groups of men differ
in their character and behavior. . . . On the other hand, the
social conditions under which men live do tend to explain
differences in behavior.”

As a matter of fact it has been the possession of these
socially conditioned skills which accounts for the circum-
stance that, at one point, the Jews may have been actually
solicited to settle in a country from which they have later
been excluded. Louis Boudin has pointed out in a brilliant
article in ORT Economic Review for September 1947 that
the qualities of a minority which are regarded as “useful”
by the majority tend to vary with time and place, more par-
ticularly with economic development. For example, Boudin
demonstrates very clearly that Jews were regarded as most
useful and valuable citizens in Portugal, Holland, and Eng-
land when there was need for their special skills. In general,
he shows that the curiously fluctuating nationalist policies
toward Jews were related to the triangular struggle between
Portugal, Holland, and Great Britain for pre-eminence in
world trade.

Possession of a set of socially conditioned skills, such as
those described by Mr. Emden, has made possible the
financial successes which “penalized” groups have often
achieved. But ironically it is precisely this success, for
which the bigotry of the majority is historically responsible,
that once again stimulates the envy of the majority. In-
dividuals who would recoil in horror from the mere thought
of becoming peddlers or ragpickers are enraged when the

The Jewish Stereotype 177

peddler becomes a prosperous merchant and the ragpicker
ends up in control of an important and profitable waste-
products plant. There is, of course, an element of poetic
justice in this process by which the penalized group is often
compensated economically for its exclusion; but one’s satis-
faction over the manner in which the process operates is
chilled by the realization that it tends to be self -generating.

That Jews persist in the possession of such skills is to be
accounted for by the fact that it is precisely their economic
assimilation that has always been most emphatically dis-
couraged by the dominant groups. “For what point is
there,” inquires Maurice Samuel, “in absorbing the Jews
and adding to the number of undifferentiated competitors?
As they stand now, the Jews are recognizable as a group
which can be pushed out in the struggle and relegated to
a lower position. Their racial or religious or psychological
differential acts as a cement for both sides. Standing out
from the rest of the world, the Jews form an excellent
target to be shot at. They help organize the struggle for
bread . . . . Suppose that, tomorrow, all Jewish merchants
were to become unrecognizable as such. What advantage
would that bring the ranks of the non- Jewish merchant class
as a whole? None at all. On the contrary, the ranks of the
non-Jewish merchant class would be greatly increased, and
an important and ‘helpful’ feature of the economic struggle,
a certain channeling of competitive opposition , would be
removed. Roughly, it would be as though the Democrats
were to wake up one morning as Republicans, and were to
flock to Republican headquarters for their share of political
spoils. The Republican Party certainly wants to be in a
majority; but it does not want all Americans to be Re-

178 A Mask for Privilege

publican because it disorganizes the whole struggle-sys-
tem .” 5

Almost every immigrant group in America has been
compelled to struggle hard in order to escape from the
particular position of subordination in the status system
to which it has been assigned. Members of some groups
have escaped by changing their names; others by inter-
marriage with the dominant group; still others by the lucky
or deserved good fortune of financial success. The Italian
American who makes a fortune becomes an artichoke king
or a flower king and ceases, for most practical purposes, to
be a “wop.” Then, too, with the appearance of the second
generation, the American born, raised, and educated gen-
eration, these groups have usually been able to evade or
to escape the restricting limitations of the stereotype, for
the badges of identification have by then begun to lose
their distinctiveness.

For a stereotype to be effective, it is always essential that
the group stereotyped should possess some badge of identi-
fication. Theoretically speaking, the nature of the badge
is immaterial. It could consist of red hair or cleft palates,
so long as it outwardly identifies the individual as a mem-
ber of a particular group. But, practically speaking, some
badges are much better than others. For example, racial
badges, for obvious reasons, are the best badges. The effec-
tiveness of the badge, however, varies in relation to many
factors: its persistence in the culture; its universality; the
extent to which it is felt to be necessary to channel competi-
tive opposition; and, above all, in relation to the position
which the differentiated group occupies in the economy.
That Jews are singled out in preference to redheads is,

The Jewish Stereotype 179

as Dr. Otto Fenichel has said, to be explained by many
factors: they are more defenseless; they are more vulnerable
to attack; and the position they occupy in the economy
makes them appear to be the cause of the misery suffered
by the victims of social and economic injustice.

While there is nothing peculiar about the mechanism
of scapegoating as applied to Jews or in the techniques by
which their subordination is attempted, still the particulars
in which the Jewish stereotype differs from the basic stereo-
type do indicate that Jew-baiting serves a special function.
Again, the difference in function is related to the difference
in social position. While concentrated in the intermediate
socio-economic positions, Jews function to some extent in
all levels of society. In a time of general crisis, therefore,
when social unrest has begun to permeate the middle as well
as the lower classes, Jews usually make a more vulnerable
and a more plausible target than other minority groups. If
a minority is confined to the lower levels of society, it can
be baited for a variety of purposes; but it cannot serve as
a general target against which the hatreds of all disaffected
groups can be directed. While social cleavages of all kinds
are emphasized in periods of economic crisis, anti-Semitism
seems to bear an intimate and special relation to major
crises, to periods of profound social maladjustment.

This special function of anti-Semitism may be illustrated
by a passage from The Sound and the Fury by William
Faulkner. Employed in a general store in a small Southern
town, Jason Compson has been losing money, which he
can ill afford to lose, through speculations on the cotton
market. There is no evidence in the novel that Jason has
ever had unfavorable personal experiences with Jews or that

180 A Mask for Privilege

his disastrous speculations on the cotton market were made
through Jewish brokers. From the following passage, how-
ever, one can see the function that anti-Semitism plays
in the psychic economy of Jason Compson:

Along toward ten o’clock I went up front. There was a
drummer there. It was a couple of minutes to ten, and I in-
vited him up the street to get a coca-cola. We got to talking
about crops.

“There’s nothing to it,” I says, “cotton is a speculator’s
crop. They fill the farmer full of hot air and get him to raise
a big crop for them to whipsaw on the market, to trim the
suckers with. Do you think the farmer gets anything out of it
except a red neck and a hump in his back? You think the man
that sweats to put it into the ground gets a red cent more than
a bare living,” I says. “Let him make a big crop and it won’t
be worth picking; let him make a small crop and he won’t have
enough to gin. And what for? so a bunch of damn eastern
jews, I’m not talking about men of the Jewish religion,” I says,
“I’ve known some jews that were fine citizens. You might be
one yourself,” I says.

“No,” he says, “I’m an American.”

“No offense,” I says. “I give every man his due, regardless
of religion or anything else. I have nothing against jews as an
individual,” I says. “It’s just the race. You’ll admit that they
produce nothing. They follow the pioneers into a new country
and sell them clothes.”

“You’re thinking of Armenians,” he says, “aren’t you. A
pioneer wouldn’t have any use for new clothes.”

“No offense,” I says. “I don’t hold a man’s religion against
him.”

“Sure,” he says, “I’m an American. My folks have some
French blood, why I have a nose like this. I’m an American,
all right.”

“So am I,” I says. “Not many of us left. What I’m talking

The Jewish Stereotype 1 8 1

about is the fellows that sit up there in New York and trim
the sucker gamblers.”

The Jewish stereotype also differs from other stereo-
types in its remarkable persistence, its deeply rooted posi-
tion in the culture. The appearance of anti-Semitic tracings
in the writings of men like Henry Adams and John Jay
Chapman indicates how widely the stereotype has per-
meated American culture. Remembering the date of the
Saratoga hotel incident, it is interesting to note that the
stereotyped, the caricatured Jew had his “first night” on
the American stage in the 1870’s. e Theodore Dreiser’s
strange, frenetic outburst of anti-Semitism in the middle
thirties is also a striking indication of how deeply the stereo-
type is embedded in American culture. 7 (It should be empha-
sized, however, that Dreiser later repudiated these unfortu-
nate outbursts.) The Jewish stereotype appears in the novels
of Robert Herrick; in a story by Willa Cather; and in the
novels of Edith Wharton. It appears in a particularly offen-
sive form in a sonnet by the distinguished American poet,
John Peale Bishop; 8 and most significantly in the novels of
Thomas Wolfe. All of the Jewish characters in Wolfe’s
novels are maladjusted or cruel or “queer,” and in describ-
ing Abraham Jones in Of Time and the River Wolfe seems
to have spewed out all of his hatred for the Jews. 9 There
was not a little anti-Semitism in much of the writing of
the 1920’s, notably in the work of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound,
and, in a less overt form, in the work of Scott Fitzgerald. 10
As Mr. Hindus points out, “there is a literary quality about
it [the fashionable anti-Semitism of the 1920’s] — as if the
writers were not thinking of real, everyday, complicated,

182

A Mask for Privilege

living Jews, but of an inherited image of them.” Occasion-
ally this fashionable literary anti-Semitism assumed, how-
ever, the crudest possible expression . 11

To change the stereotype, therefore, the relationships
which gave rise to it must be modified; the myth of anti-
Semitism must be exploded. But it is shortsighted indeed to
believe that through educational processes alone the stereo-
type can be uprooted. Education will certainly help to ex-
pose the illusory nature of the stereotype, but as long as the
relationships out of which it arises exist, the illusion itself
will persist. For as long as Jews occupy a special niche in
the economy, it will appear as though they were “different”
and the difference sensed will inevitably be rationalized.
The source of this feeling, however, is to be found in social
relationships; not in those outward manifestations of dif-
ference, real or imagined, which are seized upon to justify
discrimination . 12

To know what a majority group thinks of a minority, and
to discover the image that the minority has formed of the
majority, one needs to study in close detail the social and,
above all, the economic relations between the two groups.
For the image or stereotype will reflect or rationalize the
relationship. This is not to say, of course, that all members
of either group will accept the stereotype; there will always
be individuals whose vision is not blinded by social illusions.
While the pattern of relationships will determine what each
group thinks of the other, as a group, it will not determine
the extent of discrimination that is practiced, at any par-
ticular time, against the minority. This will vary in relation
to many factors, social, economic, historical. The stereotype
that the minority has formed of the majority will ordinarily

The Jewish Stereotype 183

not be deeply rooted, for the minority, by the nature of its
position, has a clearer vision of the relationship. The myth
that a majority develops about a minority that it is de-
termined to subordinate serves two major functions: it
rationalizes the relationship for the majority (that is, by
attributing a false motive it makes the relationship seem
fair, proper, and inherent in the nature of things) ; and it
also serves to maintain the relationship. A basic element in
all myths of this kind is that the minority is “incapable of
assimilation,” for this particular rationalization invests the
relationship with permanence and inevitability. Closely ex-
amined, therefore, racial and other similar myths will be
found to be masks for privilege. Myth, as Durkheim once
said, imitates society, not nature.

CHAPTER VIII

The Function

of the Crackpot

To the average Amerxcan, the mention of anti-Semitism
sets off a chain reaction — the German- American Bund,
Gerald L. K. Smith, William Dudley Pelley, Father Charles
Coughlin — and brings to mind the lurid exposes of John
Spivak and the more detailed and effective investigations
of John Roy Carlson. In fact the proposition that “anti-
Semitism is crackpotism” has now been thoroughly es-
tablished in the public mind. Any number of cause or-
ganizations, promoting “tolerance” and “intercultural”
understanding, have labored long and hard to establish
this association. In some curious manner, however, the
exclusionist policies of many of our social institutions and
of particular American industries have always been tacitly
excepted from the category of things anti-Semitic. These
policies are “unfortunate” and “regrettable,” but by im-
plication have no direct relation to anti-Semitism. To a
considerable degree, therefore, efforts to isolate and quar-
antine the crackpot anti-Semite have obscured his function
in the development of an organized anti-Semitic movement.
Generally speaking, this function is not understood even by
those who make a business of denouncing anti-Semitism.

The Function of the Crackpot

185

1. SAPPERS AND SHOCK TROOPS

Paralleling the efforts to isolate the rabid anti-Semite and
to make anti-Semitism synonymous with obscenity (com-
mendable efforts in themselves), a tendency has developed
among American anti-anti-Semites to poke fun at the crack-
pot by exposing the absurdity of his arguments. The real
function of the crackpot anti-Semite, however, is not to
develop arguments but to encourage the open expression of
anti-Semitism on the part of the latent anti-Semite. The
crackpots function vicariously for their inarticulate listen-
ers by doing and saying what the latter would like to do and
say, but either cannot or dare not. The antics of the com-
pletely uninhibited anti-Semite are essentially aimed at
releasing the inhibited anti-Semitism of his audience. Ra-
tionally and critically considered the various arguments
advanced by American anti-Semites represent a collection
of absurdities, fallacies, and lies; but viewed as propaganda
these same arguments must be appraised in an entirely dif-
ferent light.

Crackpot anti-Semitic propaganda, as Dr. T. W. Adorno
has pointed out , 1 aims at winning people to the open ex-
pression of anti-Semitism by playing upon their uncon-
scious mechanisms rather than by presenting facts and
arguments. Hence its personalized character; its consistent
substitution of means for ends; and the emphasis upon
propaganda as an end in itself. Anti-Semitic propaganda
functions as a kind of wish-fulfillment. It attacks bogies
rather than real opponents and systematically promotes “an
organized flight of ideas.” Intended to provide gratification

1 86 A Mask for Privilege

rather than enlightenment, anti-Semitic meetings have a
ritualistic character, as shown by the fact that the content
of these meetings is invariably the same. Dr. Adorno has
shrewdly observed that such meetings have a semireligious
tone and quality in which the specific religious content is
replaced by “a cult of the existent,” an identification with
and glorification of the status quo in politics, religion, so-
cial life, manners, the education of children, and so on.
It is important, therefore, to note Adorno’s conclusion
that “the performance of the ritual as such functions to
a very large extent as the ultimate content of fascist propa-
ganda.” 2

Successful anti-Semitic propaganda is based, as Dr.
Donald S. Strong has said, on an astute handling of the
emotions of aggressiveness, guilt, weakness, and affection.
The appeal to latent or potential aggressiveness is aimed
at releasing the inhibitions normally placed on assertive im-
pulses. Hence to be effective anti-Semitic propaganda must
be extreme, violent, and highly provocative. Inhibitions are
not released by arguments: they are released by bold and
violent assertions. Similarly, in appealing to the emotion of
guilt, the anti-Semitic propagandist seeks to depict an
enemy who epitomizes evil and is the incarnation of vice
and fraud, lust and violence. The picture which the anti-
Semite draws of “the enemy” is not intended to convince
by its plausibility and verisimilitude: it is intended to divert
the emotional stress of guilt suffered by the persons to
whom the propaganda is addressed. For this technique en-
ables the guilty to project upon “the enemy” those impulses
and half-sensed wishes which lie beneath the surface of
their own natures. To overcome the feeling of weakness

The Function of the Crackpot 187

and impotence that so many of “the little people” experi-
ence in modem society, anti-Semitic propaganda is boastful,
arrogant, and contemptuous; it struts and swaggers, it
grimaces and screams. In appealing to the emotion of affec-
tion, the anti-Semite builds up the concept of the brave,
unselfish, noble leader. Modesty is certainly not a char-
acteristic of the crackpot anti-Semites, most of whom, as
Adorno has said, are masterly salesmen of their own
psychological defects. But the test of the effectiveness of
their propaganda consists not in the degree to which it
conforms to some objective standard of plausibility and
truth, but in how it affects the persons to whom it is ad-
dressed. Nor can this effectiveness be appraised in terms of
immediate reactions, for a delayed reaction may well be in-
volved. A seed sown today may not ripen for months or
years, but once planted in receptive soil it has the pos-
sibility of later growth.

The crackpot anti-Semitic propagandist is compelled,
by the nature of his task, to exaggerate. As Strong writes,
“the ‘Red- Jew’ menace is presented as so immediate and
overwhelming that certain mores and inhibitions of con-
science must be abandoned at once or the country will
perish.” Anti-Semitic propaganda is essentially and de-
signedly negative, seldom bothering to project a long-range
program in its appeal. According to Dr. Strong, its “anti”
symbols outnumber its “pro-self” symbols in the ratio of
ten to one. For America First, Nationalism, and Christi-
anity, the anti-Semites are against everything else under the
sun. To expose the emptiness of anti-Semitic propaganda
and its lack of programmatic content is, therefore, a largely
meaningless undertaking. At the same time, however, it

1 88

A Mask for Privilege

would be extremely fallacious to assume that the case-
hardened confirmed anti-Semites lack a program merely
because they prefer to be vague. Their program is fascism
and the blueprint is clear enough, although it is seldom
clear to their followers.

Having in mind its aims and purposes, Dr. Strong drew
some interesting conclusions about the effectiveness of anti-
Semitic propaganda in the United States for the period
from 1930 to 1940. s In general he found that this propa-
ganda had been ingenious, adaptable, distinctive, and that
its symbols were reasonably appropriate to its purposes. In
fact, its one major weakness consisted in the assumption
of an undifferentiated audience. Had the anti-Semites of
this period analyzed the component parts of their large
potential mass audience, they would have addressed special
appeals and slanted their propaganda to different age
groups, income groups, occupational groups, religious
groups, sex groupings, and the like. In short, Dr. Strong
concluded that the barrage of anti-Semitic propaganda
in the thirties had been effective. Furthermore, he drew
two collateral conclusions of considerable importance: that
anti-Semitic propaganda had steadily increased in violence
after 1936; and that “the anti-semitic movement in the
United States can no longer be treated as if it were a
transient phenomenon.” Apropos the latter conclusion, he
wrote: “About a dozen new anti-semitic organizations have
been formed each year since 1933. This steady growth sug-
gests that anti-semitism has taken root in the United States
and will, even under the most unfavorable conditions, re-
main a minor ideology for some time.” In appraising the
significance of Dr. Strong’s findings, one should recall that
studies of the growth of anti-Semitism in Germany in the

The Function of the Crackpot 189

period from 1925 to 1935 have indicated that “the principal
thing which changed during these ten years was the
amount of anti-Semitic mass propaganda. The effectiveness
of this propaganda was the chief thing which altered the
attitude of the masses.” 4

The effectiveness of anti-Semitic propaganda has been
minimized in the United States largely because it has not
been related to the pattern of anti- Jewish discrimination
which exists in our society. The anti-Semitic bias in the
structure of the American economy is the reality upon
which crackpot anti-Semitism is predicated. Some pre-
liminary conditioning is always a prerequisite to the de-
velopment of an organized anti-Semitic movement. Cun-
ningly contrived, artfully constructed, this preliminary
conditioning is primarily psychological in character. At
this stage in the development of the movement, sappers
must be deployed, booby traps must be built, and shock
troops must be trained. The crackpot anti-Semites are the
sappers, the shock troops. It is a foregone conclusion that
they will be verbally abused, thrown into jail, and other-
wise kicked around. But if they do their work well, they
are easily expendable. Pre-Hitler Germany was full of
crackpot anti-Semites, as mystical as Pelley, as absurd as
Joe Jeffers, as corny as Smith, as noisy as Joe McWilliams.
For years they were taken no more seriously than most
Americans take their counterparts today. Patently absurd,
their propaganda was nonetheless based upon a solid and
powerful reality: the anti-Semitic bias in the culture of
the German people. Over a period of many years, their
activities were carefully linked with the politely concealed
anti-Semitic plottings of powerfully placed persons and
interests in Germany. Starting out as free-lance anti-

i9o A Mask for Privilege

Semites, they eventually became the puppets of their upper-
class sponsors and overlords.

While the evidence is necessarily skimpy and largely
circumstantial, it is nevertheless apparent that our crackpot
anti-Semites have long received the covert backing and
support of powerful and respectable behind-the-scenes
elements. A glance at the list of contributors to Harry
Jung’s American Vigilant Intelligence Federation — found
to be contributors by a Congressional inquiry — certainly
indicates that this particular anti-Semite had some power-
ful, wealthy, and influential backers . 5 The alibi invariably
offered for these contributors is that they are “dupes” —
that they do not understand the anti-Semitic character of
the organizations to which they contribute. While this alibi
is doubtless valid in some cases, it strains one’s sense of the
credible to believe that all such contributors are dupes.

In his detailed and elaborately documented study of
eleven anti-Semitic organizations, Dr. Strong found that
“a large percentage of the income of some of these groups”
came from the wealthy classes.® The furtiveness with which
upper-class elements have subsidized crackpot anti-Semitic
movements in this country is the most telltale evidence that
these elements have not been dupes. For the unwillingness
to be publicly identified with openly anti-Semitic move-
ments indicates the existence of a guilty conscience. The
true dupe does not remain in the background and deal
through an intermediary. In fact the furtiveness of the
sponsors throws a great deal of light on the real function
of the crackpot in the development of an anti-Semitic move-
ment. It is his function to incur the public disapproval
which his sponsor is reluctant to assume. While he is being

The Function of the Crackpot 191

booed and hissed, caricatured and lampooned, his sponsor
is comfortably ensconced in an easy chair in some club
exchanging anti-Semitic cracks with his fellow club mem-
bers.

So far as the mores of American society are concerned,
open identification with anti-Semitic organizations is nei-
ther sanctioned nor approved; but anti-Semitic slights and
discriminations are obviously sanctioned. It is quite all
right to draw a sharp line excluding Jews from important
sectors of the economy and from a large domain of social
life — even to tell defamatory stories about them — but it
is not yet considered good form to bait Jews openly and
those who do so still rim the risk of being branded crack-
pots. In the eyes of his colleagues, Henry Ford’s chief sin
must have consisted in the clumsy way in which he revealed
the existence of a strong anti-Semitic bias in the citadels of
heavy industry. Whether the fault line of anti-Semitism
which cuts across the American social structure will ever
become “active” depends, of course, on many factors; but
it is readily apparent that the crackpot has already per-
formed his function and that the stage has now been set
for larger and more significant developments.

2. THE ARMCHAIR ANTI-SEMITES
Antifascists long concerned over the growth of hate
groups in America have consistently sought an answer to
the question, Under what circumstances would it be pos-
sible for these groups to form a united front and make a
joint appeal to an estimated potential audience of between
ten and fifteen million Americans? Ideologically speaking,

192 A Mask for Privilege

the leaders of the hate groups are a most heterogeneous lot:
monetary reform addicts; Pope-baiters; mystics of the
Pelley variety; pension plan schemers; professional God-
killers; Bible-belt fundamentalists; West Coast sun worship-
ers and vegetarians; warped zealots of the John Rankin
breed; Negro-haters and what not. It is not surprising,
therefore, that these groups have experienced great dif-
ficulty in merging their ideological differences. To the ex-
tent that they have been able to work together at all, it has
been by reason of their hatred of progressive political ac-
tion, their strong antipathy to the trade-union movement,
and their unif orm and consistent anti-Semitism.

In the past, several attempts have been made to unite
these crackpot legions of the gimlet eyes. One such attempt
was made in 1934, when eleven of America’s anti-Semitic
leaders met in Chicago for the purpose of forming a coali-
tion. This initial effort fell apart when the various leaders
got to quarreling among themselves. A somewhat more
ambitious scheme to form a coalition got under way in
August 1936, when the American Forward Movement
summoned the long-haired evangels of chaos to a conference
in Asheville, North Carolina. Although it was aided by
generous financing, this particular effort collapsed when
the appearance of a gullible rabbi caused forty-five dele-
gates to bolt the conference in horror of contamination.
Still a third effort was made in August 1937, when George
B. Deatherage, the Knight of the White Camellia, sum-
moned the hate leaders to a conference in Kansas City called
in the name of the American Nationalist Confederation.
This effort likewise failed to produce the long-anticipated
confederation.

The Function of the Crackpot 193

Since so many of the hate groups are strictly personal
promotions or rackets, Dr. Strong concluded that mutual
suspicion and rivalry between the various leaders imposed
an insuperable obstacle to confederation. Any general
merger would necessarily result in the elimination of one
or more leaders and, since anti-Semitism is the bread and
butter of such gentry, proposals for confederation involv-
ing discipline and co-ordination have naturally been re-
garded with serious misgivings. Another barrier to con-
federation, noted by Dr. Strong, has consisted in the fact
that most of the organized anti-Semitic groups in the
thirties had a strong fundamentalist coloring and automati-
cally opposed any move that might involve co-operation
with Catholic anti-Semites of the Coughlin variety.

But a more basic explanation can be advanced for the
failure of these bizarre groups to merge in the past —
namely, that the bridge connecting these groups with their
powerful armchair sponsors had not yet been built. Any
attempt on the part of the crackpots themselves to form a
confederation would necessarily be doomed to failure,
since, at this level, anti-Semitism in the United States is a
promotion of lunatics. One could more readily imagine a
united front of the inmates of an insane asylum than a
united front of crackpot anti-Semites acting on their own
steam and initiative. But the chances of success in forming
such a confederation steadily improve as the ties between
the armchair anti-Semites and the crackpots become more
intimate and regular, more open and normal. While the
fringe groups reveal a bewildering variety of orientations,
the armchair anti-Semites are men of substance, solid citi-
zens, persons largely free of the neurotic taint and with a

194 A Mask for Privilege

clear idea of what they want and how they propose to get
it. Since all anti-Semitic movements are by definition un-
democratic, it follows that unification can only come from
the top, not the bottom, and that it must be based upon a
strict authoritarian discipline. This conclusion finds gen-
eral confirmation in the history of European fascist move-
ments. In their early phases, as Ellis Freeman has pointed
out, European fascist movements represented a peculiar
combination of the wealthy, who provided the finances,
and the very poor, who provided the manpower. It was
only at a somewhat later date that the impoverished middle
classes joined these movements . 7

The America First movement represents, perhaps, the
first attempt to form an open alliance between the arm-
chair anti-Semites and their crackpot allies. Under its ban-
ner, the crackpot anti-Semites were united for the first
time. While the movement could not be called anti-Semitic,
it drew into its orbit most of the crackpot leaders and their
variegated followings. It represented a center of power in
what had previously been a vacuum. By refusing to repudi-
ate, in any clear-cut or decisive manner, the anti-Semitic
organizations and individuals that allied themselves with
the movement, the leaders of America First showed a sin-
gular indifference to the use of anti-Semitism and a will-
ingness to associate publicly with individuals with whom
they had long been reluctant to be identified. The curiously
halfhearted and unconvincing disavowal of Lindbergh’s
Des Moines speech is the best evidence that the leadership
of America First was not averse to the use of anti-Semitism
as a political weapon. Had the movement survived Pearl

The Function of the Crackpot 195

Harbor, it is not improbable that the long-discussed merger
of the crackpot groups would have been effected.

Immediately following the death of President Roosevelt
in April 1945, the nationalist campaign was renewed under
the sponsorship and direction of the former leaders of
America First. In a series of articles which appeared in
the Scripps-Howard newspapers, Eugene Segal demon-
strated that former America First leaders were attempting
once again to weld the dissident crackpot groups into a
single mass movement. The manner in which the nationalist
groups attacked the United Nations Conference in San
Francisco, using the same themes, slogans, and appeals,
clearly indicated that a high degree of co-ordination had
been effected . 8 On July 26, 1945, the long-silent Lindbergh
gave an interview to the press (the interview was held in
the offices of the publisher of the Chicago Tribune ), and
other America First leaders began to speak out. What the
fringe groups were saying at public meetings from coast
to coast was echoed, almost verbatim, in speeches in Con-
gress by Rankin, Bilbo, and Hoffman. Unquestionably the
nationalist groups had carefully timed this renewed cam-
paign, for the Roper polls in April 1945 had shown a
definite increase in “anti” sentiment across the country
with a sharp increase in anti-Semitism.

3. AMERICAN ACTION

Just as the name “America First” had echoed in crack-
pot circles for years before it was used as a rallying slogan
by the armchair reactionaries, so the name “American

196 A Mask for Privilege

Action” stems directly from the fringe groups. An organi-
zation called American Action had been formed in 1939
to promote the formation of an American National Action
Party. This particular group later merged its activities
with those of the America First Committee. Early in 1945,
Gerald B. Winrod announced the formation of American
Action, Inc., which he said had been established to “uphold
constitutional democracy as against the encroachments of
un-American ideologies.” But apparently Winrod got his
wires crossed in malting this announcement, for the real
American Action Committee did not come into existence
until midsummer 1945.

American Action, Inc., is an outgrowth of a meeting
which took place in Chicago on July 30 and 31, 1945. Ac-
cording to Eugene Segal, this meeting was initiated by
Salem Bader of Los Angeles, the author of a pamphlet
entitled Is America a Christian or a Jewish Civilization ? 8
The Chicago meeting was under the chairmanship of
Merwin K. Hart, one of the founders of the America
First Committee, once referred to by Justice Robert H.
Jackson as “well-known for his pro-Fascist leanings.”
Among the individuals who attended the meeting were the
following: John T. Flynn, active in America First; DeWitt
Emery of Akron, active in the National Small Business-
men’s Association; Maurice R. Franks, business agent of the
Railroad Yardmasters of North America, a union not recog-
nized by any branch of the American labor movement;
William H. Regnery of Chicago, industrialist and banker,
formerly active in America First and treasurer of Earl
Southard’s Citizens U.S.A. Committee; Samuel Pettengill,
former chairman of the Republican National Finance Com-

The Function of the Crackpot 197

mittee, a speaker for America First, and a trustee of the
Committee for Constitutional Government; Colonel Charles
Vincent of Chicago, head of the American Foundation;
A. Dwight Nims of Los Angeles, formerly secretary of the
National League of Mothers and Women of America;
George Washington Robnett of Chicago, head of the
Church League of America; Thomas N. Creigh, lawyer,
head of the Chicago branch of Merwin K. Hart’s National
Economic Council; William A. Lamer, Jr., and R. E.
Minnis, of Topeka, both active in a committee that has
sponsored meetings for Upton Close and Samuel Pettengiil;
and, of course, Upton Close. 10

The next meeting of American Action took place in Los
Angeles at the Clark Hotel, on August 28, 1945. Shortly
prior to this meeting, ten thousand citizens of Los Angeles
had participated in a great mass meeting at the Olympic
Auditorium to protest Gerald L. K. Smith’s activities in
Southern California. Arousing much excitement in the com-
munity, this meeting had served to crystallize public opin-
ion against Smith’s anti-Semitic demagoguery. The Clark
Hotel meeting was called in part for the purpose of counter-
ing the effect of the anti-Smith mass meeting. The principal
speaker of the evening told the guests and members of
American Action that the Jews, the international bank-
ers, and Jewish Communist immigrants from Russia had
acquired an almost complete control over American
business, government, and labor. Following this talk,
Howard Emmett Rogers, of the right-wing Motion Picture
Alliance, took the floor, denounced the meeting as “noth-
ing but another anti-Semitic enterprise,” and walked

1 98 A Mask for Privilege

Formal articles of incorporation were filed in Delaware
for American Action, Inc., on January 8, 1946, and head-
quarters were established in Chicago. On May 23, 1946, a
branch office was opened in Los Angeles with the an-
nouncement that American Action had been formed “to
combat the inroads that have been made on the government
by alien-minded pressure groups.” The letterhead of Amer-
ican Action fists the following as officials of the new or-
ganization: Harold N. Moore, of Los Angeles, formerly
active in America First; James H. Gipson of Caldwell,
Idaho; Colonel Edward D. Gray; James E. McDonald,
State Commissioner of Agriculture, Austin, Texas; Mal-
colm McDermott, professor of law at Duke University;
and, as executive director, Captain Edward A. Hayes of
Chicago, former national commander of the American
Legion.

Announcing that it intended to purge 187 Congressmen,
American Action took an active part in the 1946 campaign.
The groundwork for this political activity had been laid,
and its general purpose defined, in a strong editorial which
appeared in the Chicago Tribune in midsummer 1946,
mourning the passing of the America First Committee and
urging the nationalists to reorganize. In a statement filed
with the government, American Action acknowledged the
receipt of contributions totaling $83,494.64 in the period
between January 1 and October 15, 1946. While not talcing
an active part in all of the 187 congressional districts in
which it had expressed an interest American Action did
concentrate on twenty or thirty districts in New York, Il-
linois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Washington, and
California.

The Function of the Crackpot 199

By the time of the November 1946 elections, the base of
American Action had been greatly expanded. Listed among
its contributors were the names of General Robert E.
Wood, formerly head of the America First Committee;
Colonel Robert R. McCormick of tfte Chicago Tribune;
Robert M. Harass, an ardent supporter of Father Coughlin
and a founder of the American National Democratic Com-
mittee. Among those named as sponsors by James Reston in
a story in the New York Times of October 10, 1946, are
W. Homer Hartz of Chicago, former president of the
Illinois Manufacturers’ Association; Robert Christenberry
of the Hotel Astor Corporation; Samuel Weldon, of the
First National Bank; Ernest T. Weir of the Weirton Steel
Company.

In an effort to avoid, so far as possible, the aroma of the
America First movement, American Action has concen-
trated on domestic issues and has even disclaimed a direct
interest in the international scene. 12 It is nevertheless appar-
ent that the leaders of American Action are the former
leaders of the America First Committee. While American
Action has denied any connection with Gerald L. K. Smith,
it is interesting to note that Smith regards the new move-
ment with complete enthusiasm. In the issue of his newslet-
ter for October 28, 1946, he urged all former members of
America First to co-operate with American Action and to
follow its lead. And this motion was, so to speak, quickly
seconded by most of the other crackpot leaders. “Myriads
of the smallfry bigots,” reports the bulletin of the Friends
of Democracy for September 30, 1946, “are fitting into the
picture of American Action. . . . These are the people who
will furnish the mass following for the new group’s political

2 00

A Mask for Privilege

action program; they will ring the doorbells, make house-
to-house canvasses, bring out the vote for candidates en-
dorsed by American Action.”

American Action should be regarded, therefore, not as
a hew departure in American politics but as the end product
of a long period of experimental work in the formation of
an inclusive right-wing political alliance.

That American Action represents a new maturity or
crystallization of reaction is shown by the emergence of
intermediate figures who stand midway between the crack-
pots and the armchair reactionaries. The increasingly im-
portant role now being played by these intermediate types
indicates that middle-class elements have begun to be in-
volved and that the new movement aims to slough off some
of the verbal crudities of the America First spokesmen.
Since the crackpots have already discharged their pre-
liminary softening-up assignment, the movement can now
afford to modify its rhetoric, to disavow its more exu-
berant followers, and to refrain from open provocation.
Part of this reorientation consists in pushing such inter-
mediate figures as John T. Flynn and Upton Close into the
foreground of the movement.

As a news analyst and commentator, Upton Close began
to take a violently reactionary fine after 1939. He was
dropped for a time from the NBC staff following a broad-
cast on December 7, 1941, in which he had suggested that
the attack on Pearl Harbor might have been a surprise to
the Japanese government or that it could have been perpe-
trated by German ships or a fanatical portion of the Jap-
anese fleet acting without orders. He was again dropped by
the NBC circuit following a broadcast on July 9, 1944, in

201

The Function of the Crackpot

which he had implied that the death of John Bryan Owen,
a friend of Tyler Kent, was part of an “international”
scheme. Throughout the war, the crackpot groups had
sought to use the Tyler Kent case as a means of attacking
the Roosevelt administration, and also of imputing a va-
riety of sinister motives to high officials in the State De-
partment. The plot, however, had fallen rather flat when
Joseph P. Kennedy, our Ambassador to Great Britain at
the time of the Kent scandal, revealed that Tyler Kent had
“built up a terrific anti-Semitic complex” while serving in
the American Embassy in London. The intermediate role
of Close is shown, in this instance, by the fact that he was
repeating on a nationwide broadcast one of the favorite
themes of the crackpot anti-Semitic organizations.

While insisting that he is not anti-Semitic, Close has used
arguments in criticizing the Jews that cannot be distin-
guished from those used by anti-Semites. “The greatest
sorrow of my career,” he said in one broadcast, “and which
may become America’s greatest tragedy is the Communist
control of the Jewish minority. . . . Hundreds of Jewish
publications have become avowedly Communist. Also, the
smart Jewish commentators on the radio put out the party
line. Only in a few cases do the better minds among the Jews
do anything about this menace.”

In a recent bulletin, the Friends of Democracy call at-
tention to the prominent role that Close has been playing
in the “marriage between ‘respectable’ financiers and rabble-
rousing Christian Fronters.” Sponsored by John J. Raskob,
John T. Flynn, and Ogden H. Hammond — one of Gen-
eralissimo Franco’s admirers in the United States — the
National Economic Council gave a dinner in honor of

202 A Mask for Privilege

Close at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on No-
vember 1, 1946. “Flanked by Lammot du Pont and John J.
Raskob,” Close denounced the New Deal as “bastard Marx-
ism.” Prominent among the guests at this banquet, according
to the Friends of Democracy Bulletin, were Colonel
Edward D. Gray of American Action; Robert M. Harriss,
the Coughlinite financier; Joseph Kamp, Edward A.
Rumely, Mrs. Livingston Rowe Schuyler, and John A.
Zellers. Tickets were distributed at the banquet for a
rally of the Christian Front which was held at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music a few nights later, at which Close was
again the principal speaker. At this rally, May Quinn,
the Coughlinite teacher who was recently fined two
months’ salary for “dereliction of duty,” presided.

How these new intermediate types are being used to
bridge the gap between the armchair reactionaries and their
rabble-rousing followers may be clearly seen in a pamphlet
by John T. Flynn called T he Smear T error. Originally pub-
lished as a series of feature articles in the Chicago Tribune,
the pamphlet develops the interesting thesis (a) that anti-
Semitism has never been able to find reputable sponsors;
and (b) that the danger of native fascist movements has
definitely passed in the United States. It seems that anti-
Semitism was never a real danger, anyway, since it was
emphasized only “to frighten our unfortunate foreign pop-
ulations and to induce contributions.” Racial hatred will
always be with us, according to Flynn, for “it is too much
to hope that poor, weak human beings will be able to rid
themselves wholly of some form of bias.” Our aim, there-
fore, should be “to permit these poisonous infections to lie
dormant and not by foolish or vicious procedures to de-

The Function of the Crackpot 203

velop them into a raging contagion.” It is curious that Mr.
Flynn should believe that a “poisonous infection” can
safely be permitted to lie dormant. In one of the articles in
this series, Mr. Flynn, by some amazing double talk, man-
ages to convert a defense of Lindbergh against the charge
of anti-Semitism into a frontal attack on the very groups
who are fighting native fascism in the United States. That
such shabby rationalizations should be advanced by a man
like Flynn, who is certainly not a crackpot, only empha-
sizes the consolidation of reactionary tendencies now tak-
ing place in this country.

However I do share Mr. Flynn’s dislike of the promiscu-
ous use of smear words, such as “fascist,” “anti-Semite,” and,
for that matter, “communist” and “red.” Consequently I
want to make it clear that I do not regard American Action,
Inc., as either fascist or anti-Semitic; nor would I want an
inference to be drawn that I believe its leaders are fascists or
anti-Semites. Some of these leaders are men who have con-
tributed to numerous Jewish causes and have, in other re-
spects, demonstrated a friendly attitude toward the Jewish
minority. American Action interests me because it illustrates
the relationship between reaction and crackpotism. What
is significant about the organization is this: that any strong
center of power formed on the extreme right will nowadays
attract anti-Semites as a magnet will pick up pieces of metal.
The extreme reaction of right-wing industrial groups seems
to have a natural attraction for these elements. Even if
American Action were to disavow, more emphatically than
it has done in the case of Gerald L. K. Smith, the following
which it has attracted, the following would still be there.
It is a truism that politics makes for strange bedfellows.

204 A Mask for Privilege

Overzealous antifascists in America have tried to make an
Alfred Hitchcock movie, with conspirators meeting at mid-
night in abandoned windmills, out of relationships that are
based on “affinities,” not conspiracies. The question, there-
fore, is whether any extreme right-wing political movement
in the United States can avoid attracting anti-Semites and
uniting them by the mere force of this attraction.

Fascist movements never emerge out of thin air. “It is a
mistake to believe,” writes Dr. Ellis Freeman, “that a Euro-
pean fascist party ever did, or an American ever will, spon-
taneously crystallize around a dramatic popular personality.
It has to be constructed from bed-rock up ” (emphasis
mine). Certain elements, widely dissimilar in background
and interest, invariably collaborate in the early phases of
this construction. Their collaboration is quite frequently
of the unconscious variety suggested by the homely remark
of Gerald L. K. Smith that a Holstein cow in Wisconsin
gives much the same kind of milk as a Holstein cow in
New York. At the outset, leadership is frequently asserted
by a small group of crackpot zealots and fanatics. But these
elements would never be able to build a fascist movement
without the support of an elite group utterly immune, as
Freeman writes, “even to the minimum of mystical non-
sense which the Fuehrer himself may be inclined to ac-
cept.” In Germany such men as Thyssen and Krupp von
Bohlen did not pour vast sums of money into the Nazi
movement out of an enthusiasm for Aryanism any more
than Mussolini’s behind-the-scenes backers were “infatu-
ated with the beatitudes of Latinity.” Both in Italy and in
Germany, these hard-boiled realists wanted a specific task

The Function of the Crackpot 205

performed, namely, “the balking of social change which
jeopardized their position.”

In line with Huey Long’s famous prediction that fas-
cism would come to America in the guise of antifascism,
one notices today a striking tendency on the part of organ-
ized reaction to twist democratic slogans and beliefs into
profoundly undemocratic molds. Thus efforts to strengthen
the position of minorities are denounced as an incitement
of minorities against the majority. New York’s antidiscrim-
ination law is, in the view of Merwin K. Hart, “itself a dis-
crimination against white Gentile Americans, who . . .
bore the brunt of this terrible war.” Exclusionist policies
are defended in the name of “freedom of association,” while
monopoly becomes synonymous with “free enterprise.”
Efforts to combat the activities of anti-Semitic rabble
rousers are described as attacks on “freedom of speech,”
while “freedom to hate” is advanced as a natural right.
Through perverse rationalizations of this sort, antifascists
become totalitarians and “red fascists” while native fascists
emerge as the defenders of the American tradition!

Those who minimize the danger of native fascism should'
ponder the results of a study of the prevalence of attitudes
favorable to fascism made by a social psychologist in 1936.
Avoiding the use of the word “fascism,” the attitudes of a
fairly good sample of American citizens were tested in
terms of seven basic concepts of European fascism. While
75 per cent of the sample professed strong opposition to
“fascism,” a disturbingly high percentage uniformly en-
dorsed the characteristic pattern of fascist ideology. 14
“American culture,” writes Dr. Jerome Himelhoch, “by
creating personalities that need race prejudice in order to

206 A Mask for Privilege

maintain their psychic balance, has created an enormous
potential for fascism.” 14 Whether prejudice will become
sufficiently “salient,” in Dr. Himelhoch’s phrase, “to come
out of the club and go into the streets” depends on many
factors; but that the potential mass base for a fascist move-
ment exists in the United States today can hardly be ques-
tioned. The nature of this potential mass base can be read-
ily demonstrated by an examination of a recent “test tube”
sample of American fascism.

chapter ix The Atlanta Putsch

On August 17, 1946, a corporate charter was issued in
Atlanta, Georgia, to an organization calling itself Colum-
bians, Inc. The petition for the charter filed in the Fulton
County Superior Court listed the names of the incorpora-
tors as Homer L. Loomis, Jr., John H. Zimmerlee, Jr., and
Emory Burke. According to the articles of incorporation,
the new organization was formed “to encourage our people
to think in terms of race, nation and faith and to work for
a moral reawakening in order to build a progressive white
community that is bound together by a deep spiritual con-
sciousness of a common past and a determination to share
a common future.” From this insignificant beginning
emerged the first fascist revolt in the United States — the
Atlanta or “beer hall” Putsch of American fascism.

1. THE LEADERS

Who were the leaders of Columbians, Inc.? Of Zimmerlee
little is known. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Emory
Burke was thirty-one years of age at the time of his arrest,
a railroad draftsman by profession, a high school graduate.
According to the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, Burke
is a former member of one of Joe McWilliams’s anti-Semitic
hoodlum gangs in New York with a record of active par-
ticipation in hate groups dating back to the middle thirties.

208 A Mask for Privilege

It was his boast that he had once shared an apartment with
Ernest Elmhurst, a Nazi propagandist later indicted for
sedition. From newspaper accounts, one can assume that
Burke’s background was lower middle class; but Loomis
stems from a quite different background.

At the time of the Atlanta Putsch, Loomis was thirty-
two years of age, having been bom in New York on
January 31, 1914. His father, Homer Loomis, Sr., is a
successful admiralty lawyer, with a Park Avenue address
and a listing in the Social Register. As a youngster Loomis
attended such fashionable private schools as St. Bernard’s
School in Manhattan and, later, St. Paul’s in Concord, New
Hampshire. Entering Princeton University in the fall of
1932, he flunked out three years later. His first marriage, in
1935, culminated in a sensational action in the New York
courts in which his wife won an annulment. In the trial of
this action, Mrs. Loomis testified that her husband had
forced her to read “A Mad Man’s Manuscript” from the
Pickwick Papers in a dimly lighted room — the story of a
man who plotted his wife’s murder. After she had finished
reading the tale, Loomis asked her what she thought of it.
To her reply that it was “practically impossible,” he is
reported to have said: “I disagree — I have thought about
it often.” Following this first adventure in notoriety,
Loomis was involved in a typical playboy stunt: a sit-down
strike in the Club Bali, where he and his companions slept
on the banquette in pajamas, got themselves photographed,
and otherwise made fools of themselves.

In the summer of 1937, Loomis remarried. With funds
provided by his second wife, he then proceeded to fail in
a business venture in Florida and, later, in a large-scale farm-

The Atlanta Putsch

209

ing scheme in Virginia. It was apparently while living in
Virginia that Loomis first became infatuated with Hitler
and began to study the Nazi regime. According to Croswell
Bowen’s interesting account of Loomis in PM for January
12, 1947, the future Fiihrer began to tell his neighbors and
friends in 1940 that “Hitler has the right idea. He’s not
going to let the German race get mixed up with a lot of
inferior races.” Arguing endlessly that fascism was “in-
evitable” and “logical,” Loomis was finally reported to the
authorities and interviewed by the FBI. Inducted into the
army in 1944, he served overseas with the 2nd Armored
Division and was honorably discharged at Fort Meade in
February 1946. It was shortly after his discharge that
Loomis went to Atlanta for the express purpose of launch-
ing a fascist movement. “I had to leave New York,” he
said, “to discover America, to get close to the people.” It
was his intention, so he told a friend in New York, “to get
just one congressman into Washington, then one from
every state. . . . Then, I’m going to have a mighty army
and we’re going to march on New York. If I go to jail for
a while, it’ll give me a chance to think and to write a book,
Thunder in the South. I’m going to be the Hitler of
America.”

In commenting on Loomis’s ideas, the editor of the
Princetonian suggests that he was motivated, perhaps, by
ideas similar to those expressed under the heading of
“Noblesse Oblige” in a recent article in Hall-Mark, the
publication of Whig-Clio, Princeton’s old and distinguished
debating society. “Only if Americans can develop,” to
quote from this article, “a class which is fit to rule shall we
have much hope for a prosperous future. Princetonians

210

A Mask for Privilege

must develop a sense of duty equal to the privileges which
have been bestowed on them. ... If there might be. de-
veloped a government of those fit to rule for the benefit of
the masses, but without their assistance, we could look
forward to a more prosperous future in our country and to
more effective relations with other nations in a world at
peace.” It is interesting to note that in his interview with
Bowen, Loomis had said that the people were “ignorant
and underprivileged” and that they “craved leadership.”

The most striking phase of Loomis’s story is his Park
Avenue background. As Max Lerner has pointed out in
an editorial in PM?

Up to now the would-be Fuehrers have generally come
from the rural regions, the^ small towns, the urban lower mid-
dle class. Loomis comes from a group which — fashioning a
mongrel word suggested by the term Lumpenproletariat —
I can only call the Lz^zp£ 72 -leisure-class. It is a world of empti-
ness, excesses, frustrations; a twilight world of functionless
people who are the real wasteland of American life.

We have often thought of fascist leaders as the incarnation
of hatred. But in Loomis’ case it is clear that the hatred of Ne-
groes and Jews is secondary — a convenient instrument, not a
fanatic passion. Here was a man whose whole life was a suc-
cession of failures, in a group accustomed to success and rule.
And so he cooks up a hotch-potch assortment of crazy ingredi-
ents drawn from the surrounding atmosphere — racial “purity,”
white supremacy, anti- Jewish myths, sexual asceticism, class-
war, army discipline, the cult of violence. . . .

I find an alarming theme in the material Bowen has dug up
from the Princeton paper, showing the conviction that many
young men of the leisure-class have that they belong to an
elite group; that, without doing anything useful in their na-
tion, they are the natural rulers of the masses, by divine right

The Atlanta Putsch

2 I I

of property, race, breeding, leisure. From there it is only a
step toward the effort to manipulate the masses in order to
serve the power-lusts and the revenge-impulses of the self-
styled elite who are only empty-minded boys in an empty
world. What America contributes to the natural history of
fascism is this progression from night-club nuisances to street
political hoodlums. . . .

There is little question that the human material for fascism
is present in American life. . . .

2. THE BACKGROUND

That Loomis and Burke knew what they were about is
shown by their deliberate selection of Atlanta as the place
from which to launch a fascist movement. Beginning* in
May 1945, strenuous efforts had been made in Georgia to
revive the K.K.K. Eugene Talmadge’s victory in the Demo-
cratic primary a year later points to the conclusion that
these efforts had been largely successful. That racial ten-
sions were mounting more rapidly in Georgia, perhaps,
than in any Southern state is shown not merely by the
revival of the K.K.K., which began in Georgia, but by the
frightful murder of four Negroes near Monroe, Georgia,
on July 26, 1946. Although neither Burke nor Loomis was
a native of Georgia, they had excellent reasons to believe
that here was the natural locale for a rehearsal of the fascist
plot in America. As a matter of fact, the formation of
Columbians, Inc., was directly related to the proceedings
to revoke the charter of the K.K.K. in Georgia. The Co-
lumbians received their charter only a few weeks after a
suit had been filed in the same court to revoke the charter
of the Klan. It has even been said that Columbians, Inc.,
was formed for the express purpose of taking over the

212 A Mask for Privilege

functions and activities of the Klan should its charter be
revoked . 1

According to a statement of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi
League, both Loomis and Burke appeared to be well-
grounded in Nazi techniques . 2 While admitting that the
Nazis had made mistakes, Loomis contended that the Co-
lumbians, by avoiding these mistakes, could build “a power-
ful force of reaction.” A fairly careful plan of organization
had been worked out for the Columbians. A captain and
five lieutenants were designated for each section. Each
of the lieutenants commanded ten sergeants. The captains
acted directly on orders and instructions from the head-
quarters of the organization on Barstow Street in Atlanta.
The timetable which Loomis and Burke had prepared called
for control of the Atlanta city government in six months;
of the Georgia state government in two years; of most of
the Southern state governments and congressional delega-
tions in four years; and of national control in ten years.
While they really had no program, the stated objectives of
the Columbians were: to make the United States into an
“American nationalist state”; to deport all the Negroes to
Africa; and to make America “a one-race nation.” 8

In a raid on the headquarters of the Columbians, the
police later found a library of fifty volumes devoted to
the Nazi movement and including, of course, Hider’s Mein
Kampf, which Loomis referred to, appropriately enough,
as his “bible.” Shortly after its formation, Columbians, Inc.,
endorsed Gerald L. K. Smith’s America First movement
and aligned itself with the Gentile Army. Such anti-Semitic
hate sheets as X-Ray and Destiny were regularly received
at the headquarters. Among the first things the conspirators

The Atlanta Putsch

213

did was to adopt an insignia for the new movement: the
thunderbolt or “flash” symbol copied from the Nazi Elite
Guard. A somewhat similar symbol had been used by the
Canadian fascist movement. Called the Thunderbolt, the
publication of the Columbians had a format patterned after
the official organ of the prewar Union of Canadian Fascists.
It has been suggested that there may well have been an
element of coincidence here, since Loomis said that he had
taken the flash insignia from the red bolt of lightning ap-
pearing in the shoulder patch emblem of the 2nd Armored
Division.

The headquarters of the Columbians consisted of a dingy
three-room suite in which some of the members lived,
sleeping on cots and mattresses on the floor so that someone
would always be present to answer emergency calls. White
persons were encouraged to telephone the headquarters
whenever a Negro attempted to move into a white or
mixed district; and to report “troublesome” Negroes. Mem-
bers were given instructions in the gentle art of dragging
drunken Negroes into the homes of “nigger haters” where
the police could later arrest them on trumped-up charges
of burglary or attempted rape. When the police finally
cracked down on the Columbians, the organization had
approximately two hundred members, but eight hundred
application cards were found in the headquarters. Members
wore a brown-shirt uniform with the flash emblem on the
sleeves of their shirts and greeted their leader at meetings
with the cry “ Heil , Loomis! ” which was later modified to
“Heil, Columbia!” In soliciting new members, organizers
asked three simple questions: “Do you hate Negroes? Do
you hate Jews? Do you have three dollars?”

214 A Mask for Privilege

While at work on the morning of October 31, 1946,
Arthur Weiss, Commander of Jewish War Veterans At-
lanta Post No. 112, was told that Columbians, Inc., had
issued a provocative anti-Semitic leaflet and were using a
sound truck in the streets to drum up attendance for a
meeting that evening. Carrying the lightning flash symbol
in red ink, the leaflet charged that “the JEWS, who do
the greatest part of advertising in newspapers, hate us be-
cause we had the courage to come out and tell the truth
about how the JEWS are taking all the wealth and money
in the nation. The JEWS and the newspapers are AFRAID
of us because we are organizing the white people of the
South.” Sometime prior to the appearance of this leaflet,
Loomis had told two students from Oglethorpe University
that “the Negro would behave himself if it wasn’t for the
Jews. It’s the Jews’ fault that the Negroes are getting out
of place.”

That evening about 125 Jewish war veterans led by
Weiss, who had served as a captain with the 1st Marine
Division at Guadalcanal, appeared at the hall and inter-
rupted the meeting with shouts of “Lies!” when Loomis
said, “I hate the Jews because they have never become part
of the American way of life,” and went on to charge that
“Jews were the original Nazis” who had conspired for
world domination. “The Jew,” he said, “will die for what
he believes in, but I’ve never seen one die for the American
world.” At this point, the police intervened and Loomis
announced that the remainder of the meeting would be
closed to the public. The Jewish war veterans then left
the hall.

Following this meeting, Loomis and three other uni-

The Atlanta Putsch

215

formed members of Columbians, Inc., were arrested on
November 2 for intimidating, by threats of violence, a
Negro from moving into a home in a semi-white neighbor-
hood. Before appearing at the scene of the picketing,
Loomis had granted a two-hour interview to Tom Ham
of the Atlanta Journal. 4 The interview took place in the
headquarters of the organization, with Loomis sitting at a
desk placed in front of a wall decorated with a large purple
curtain containing the red flash emblem. During the course
of this interview, Loomis poured out “a torrent of impas-
sioned words,” denouncing Negroes, Jews, and Commu-
nists, and castigating the rich who exploit the masses. He
impressed Ham as “tense, high-strung”; a man who used
good English and who displayed oratorical talent. “We’re
political,” Loomis told Ham; “we’re going to show them
[the white people] how to take control of the government
— first a neighborhood, then the whole city, then the state
government, and finally the national government.” While
the interview took place, Loomis was busy directing by
phone the squads who were picketing the home of the
Negro. “Just stand around,” Ham heard him say. “Don’t
budge. If the Negro tries to move in, just stand there on
the doorstep and don’t give ground. But if the police order
you directly to let him move in, let him. That will put
the burden on the police.” Remarks of this character dem-
onstrate, clearly enough, that Loomis knew something
about Nazi tactics in handling police and had studied their
skillful use of provocation. “This police trouble,” he said,
“is purging out the weaklings. It’s good for us.”

21 6

A Mask for Privilege

3. THE DENOUEMENT

Prior to the picketing incident of November 2, the
Atlanta police had investigated the bombing of a home at
333 Ashby Street, occupied by a Negro, Goldsmith Sibley,
and his grandmother, sister, and niece. A blast of dynamite
had ripped off a portion of the porch and about ten square
feet of weatherboarding. One of the members of Colum-
bians, Inc., has described in an affidavit what occurred on
November 2:

When we got out there [to the Negro’s home] there were
not many people. The niggers came over on the truck with
their furniture. Jack Price [a Columbian] walked up and said:
“Niggers, you can’t move in here. This is a white section. I am
telling you, you had better not move in here. If you do, we
will blow you out.”

The nigger said, “Boss man, I bought this here house. They
told me this is a colored section. I got my money in it. It is my
house and I got a right to move in.”

Price then said: “This is not a nigger community. The nig-
gers who live here are going to move out. If they don’t move
out, we are going to blow up everyone just like we are going
to do to you. If you don’t believe I’ll stop you, just get that
furniture in. I’ll stop you right here.” 5

It was at this point that the police arrested the pickets.
A day or so later, however, Loomis ordered two Colum-
bians to return to the home and told them “to shoot any
colored man who comes out.” One of the pickets who re-
turned has said in an affidavit: “I had a rifle, Jimmy had a
rifle, and the others had three pistols. When we got there,
however, the police were sitting out front.” One of the

The Atlanta Putsch 217

informers also charged that Loomis had once taken him to
a shack three miles from Atlanta where he saw Loomis
exchange two K.K.K. membership cards for five sticks of
dynamite. Stored in the shack was “a mess of a mmu nition”
including about twenty-five rifles, shotguns, and pistols.
The riot indictment subsequently filed against Loomis and
Burke charged them with responsibility for beating a
Negro into a state of hysteria on the night of October 28. 6

At one of the street meetings conducted by the Colum-
bians, a uniformed member appeared holding his axteen-
months-old daughter in his arms (ostensibly to demonstrate
the “peaceful” character of the demonstration) . It was later
established that this storm trooper had, for more than a
year, been sending his daughter to a free child clinic main-
tained in Atlanta by the B’nai B’rith organization/

“Everybody in America is free to hate,” Loomis shouted
at a meeting on November 22. “Hate is natural. It’s not
un-American to hate. Why does the Jew think that he
alone is above criticism and being hated?” Returning from
a money-raising trip to New York, Loomis told his fol-
lowers: “I talked to some of the rich folks I know in
New York. The kind who have escutcheons hangin g on
their walls and are so proud of their blood lines and ante-
cedents. They’re all for me in what I’m trying to do, but
they don’t like your kind of people — the people I’m work-
ing with. They made their money exploiting common
people and they don’t want to see you organized and put
in a position to help yourselves. Sure, I got a little money
in New York; but I had to get it from poor folks.” 8
According to Ellis Amall some outside money was unques-
tionably involved in the promotion of Columbians, Inc. “I

218 A Mask for Privilege

know/’ he said, “that such organizations as the Columbians,
and such peddlers of hate as the hundreds of slimy little
racial and class sheets that are distributed and broadcast
throughout our common country, cost a great deal more
money to support than the riffraff that front for such
groups can raise from deluded and neurotic followers.”

The Columbians had prepared a list of the organizations
and individuals that they intended to purge from Southern
society. Both CIO and A. F. of L. unions occupied con-
spicuous places on the list. Loomis and Burke had made it
quite clear that they wanted labor organizers, “particularly
Negro organizers, kicked off the streets, leaving the field
clear for a Columbian Gentile union.” 9 Shortly after Ralph
McGill, editor of the Constitution , launched a vigorous
editorial campaign against the Columbians, he was visited
by two men who threatened to “fix” him if the campaign
were not dropped immediately. When a suit was brought
by the Attorney General of Georgia to revoke the charter
of the organization, Burke, in a fit of anger, tore up the
charter and mailed the pieces to the Attorney General with
his compliments. “We don’t care a mouthful of snuff spit,”
he said, “what the papers say or think. That’s how much
we care about them.”

In an official report to Governor Arnall, the Attorney
General charged that Columbians, Inc., had:

1. Systematically planned to intimidate and injure members
of minority racial and religious groups;

2. Conspired to bring about the arrest of innocent Georgia
citizens on false charges;

3. Unlawfully arrested citizens of Georgia;

4. Assembled a private arsenal of deadly weapons;

The Atlanta Putsch

219

5. Bombed the home of a Negro in the City of Atlanta;

6. Corruptly influenced the behavior of minors by inciting
them to the commission of criminal offenses; and

7. Restrained home owners in Fulton County from the full
and proper enjoyment of their property by force, threats,
duress and intimidation.

In this same report, the Attorney General outlined the
plans which the Columbians had formulated for spreading
the movement to other states. The tactics of the campaign,
he reported, involved incitement against the Negro in the
South, the Jews in the big cities, the Mexicans in the South-
west, and the Orientals on the West Coast. In fact Loomis
had boasted to the Columbians that he had arranged for
offices in various cities in the Middle West and that, once
organized there, the Columbians would a go into these cities
like storm troopers, parading, smashing windows of Jewish
stores and scaring people. We will start street fights. After
a week or so of this, we will hold a mass meeting and work
from there on.”

Here is Albert Deutsch’s description of some of the per-
sonality types to be found in this test-tube sample of Amer-
ican fascism:

A real estate man reputed to be buying up white homes
cheap and selling them high to Negroes in “tension areas” at
the very time he was egging on his fellow-Columbians to fight
off the “nigger invasion”. . .

A salesman who had signed a contract with the leaders to sell
memberships at $3 each, pocketing $2 on each card. . . .

A fugitive from a mental hospital. . . .

A 21-year-old youngster, who had spent his youth in a
Georgia orphanage and who had served with the Marines on
Guadalcanal and Bougainville. Asked why he had joined Co-

220

A Mask for Privilege

lumbians, Inc., he said “To tell the truth, I had no place to go.
I wanted to be with other fellows and get into something.
Besides, I don’t like niggers.”. . .

A youngster, 17 years of age, who had run away from his
Georgia home when he was 13. He had bummed around Chi-
cago, worked as a bellhop in the Morrison Hotel, and had
then returned to Atlanta to work in a hamburger joint when
he joined the Columbians.

Concluding his revealing account of the personality types
to be found in the membership of Columbians, Inc., Deutsch
writes:

There are great numbers of young people like these with
poor moorings or no anchorage, who feel like outcasts, who
feel that they have nothing to look forward to, whose natural
craving for adventure is not socially directed into constructive
channels, who have been poisoned by regional and national
prejudices, who don’t feel that they belong, who wish des-
perately to latch on to something concrete with the colorful
overtones that youth yearns for. They are duck soup for fascist
demagogues . 10

On February 15, 1947, Loomis was sentenced to serve
a year in a public works camp following his conviction of
incitement to riot. He was defended at his trial by his
father, who, in a two-hour speech to the jury — “my fair-
skinned brothers” — had argued that his son was being
“crucified like Christ by the Jews.” Given a three-year
sentence a week later, Emory Burke announced that “a
few court cases are not going to stop this movement.” And
thus ended the Atlanta Putsch — thanks to the effective
work of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League and the

The Atlanta Putsch

221

prompt and courageous action of Governor Ellis Amall.

But the idea upon which this abortive Putsch was based
is not dead by any means. On December 17 the FBI re-
vealed that application cards, soliciting membership in Co-
lumbians, Inc., had been distributed in Austin, Texas. On
November 18, a grand jury in Asheville, North Carolina,
indicted a group of men for incitement to riot, the in-
dictment charging that the leaders of this conspiracy had
formed a “protective association” to take over, the func-
tion of law enforcement in the community. On Novem-
ber 25, several policemen in Tacoma, Washington, were
stripped of their badges for having participated in a vigilante
movement aimed at usurping the functions of the regularly
constituted law enforcement officials. The K.K.K. is still
very much alive in Georgia and the Klan is the parent of
Columbians, Inc. The Columbians, reports Assistant Attor-
ney General Dan Duke, were simply “the juvenile delin-
quents of the Klan.”

It is significant that the Atlanta Putsch should have been
launched at a time when World War II had not yet been
formally terminated (the President’s proclamation was not
issued until December 31, 1946). While the Columbians
have been crushed and their leaders imprisoned, their move-
ment went one step further than any native American
fascist movement has yet dared to travel along the road
which Hitler and Mussolini moved to dictatorial power.
Even such groups as the Klan have consistently functioned
as secret, conspiratorial organizations; but the Columbians,
recognizing the value of provocative tactics, swaggered
through the streets in broad daylight and intimidated their
victims without attempting a disguise. The revolt which

222

A Mask for Privilege

the Colu mbians attempted to organize in Atlanta was a
fascist revolt — the first real Putsch attempted in America.
“Tendencies to dismiss the Columbian order as just another
crackpot, hoodlum movement,” writes Deutsch, “are off
the beam. With just a little more effective timing or balance,
this movement might have clicked and thrown not only
Georgia but the country into chaos.”

With the incorrigible egotism of the playboy, Loomis
had not even attempted to gear Columbians, Inc., into the
larger scheme of things. Acting prematurely, on his own,
he had given little thought to securing pledges of support
and assistance, as well as advice, from the real leaders of
American fascism. He went about the organization of
Columbians, Inc., much as he had gone about organizing
the pajama strike in the Club Bah. If he had not been so
anxious to make the headlines, the launching of Colum-
bians, Inc., might have coincided with the present red-
baiting crusade and received the blessing, temporary though
it would have been, of Herman Talmadge. But daring has
its own rewards and the Atlanta Putsch has unquestionably
left its imprint on the fascist mind in America. Patterned
after this ludicrous precedent, who knows what structures
of power will be built on some troubled tomorrow when
the chips are really down and the final hand has been dealt?
Is this the collapse of a playboy’s fantasy or perhaps an
intimation of things to come? 11

CHAPTER X

No Ordinary Task

Today there is no excuse for the smug suburbanite who
would refuse to live next door to Einstein, for the Nazis
have exposed every excuse, every alibi, every shabby ra-
tionalization underlying such conduct. “At no time in the
past 2,000 years,” to quote from The Black Book , “has anti-
semitism been unmasked and discredited in the eyes of the
people as it is today.” But the showing of newsreels based
on the Nazi atrocities will not rid the world of anti-
Semitism. A searchlight must be thrown, not on the vic-
tims, but on the nature of the disease, on the social atmos-
pheres conducive to its spread, on the means by which it is
communicated and the purposes for which it is used. For
anti-Semitism is the most treacherous, deceptive, and tena-
cious of social prejudices; the most difficult to isolate or to
define; the most resistant to enlightenment and therapy.
Related to much larger issues, its eradication will prove no
ordinary task. .

L DRAIN THE SWAMPS

The campaign to eradicate anti-Semitism must be organ-
ized on two levels: a general attack on the socio-economic
conditions which breed the disease; and a special campaign
ta eliminate all forms of discrimination based solely on race,
color, or creed. The general attack demands, as Joshua

224 A Mask for Privilege

Trachtenberg once said, that “we drain the swamps of our
social life where the Anopheles of anti-semitism breed.”
This is a task of a large order which it is not my purpose
to ou tlin e, even if I felt competent to do so. But it should
be apparent from the preceding chapters that what the task
involves is the creation of a society in which production
is organized on some basis other than individual self-aggran-
dizement. Since most of the various forms of discrimination
have long since become institutionalized in our society —
part of the framework of society itself — their elimination
will require important modifications in the social structure.
To e limina te discrimination, our acquisitive economy must
be brought under conscious democratic controls and must
be made to serve a major purpose of all social organization
— namely, to enlarge the areas in which co-operation rather
than competition is the norm.

In this sense, “draining the swamps” of our social life
involves issues not directly related to the type of economy
in which we function. The larger issue, perhaps, is: how
can we fashion an industrial society in which full provision
is made for basic human needs? For it is all too obvious that
many of the frustrations of modern life can be traced to
the kinds of work that people are required to perform,
quite apart from the conditions under which these tasks are
currently performed or the incentives, individual and social,
now offered for their performance. Socially speaking, the
function of work should be to orientate the individual to
reality. But what judgment must be passed on a society in
which work has been robbed, in many areas, of any sem-
blance of meaning, purpose, or human dignity?

“It is interesting to speculate,” writes Dr. Edward A.

No Ordinary Task 225

Strecker, “on what the mental patient might say in his own
defense if he had his day in the Court of Mental Hygiene.
Should the schizophrenic patient argue the matter of reality
versus unreality ... he might ask some rather embarrass-
ing questions. Is it not possible that in the individuality of
the mental patient . . . there is an unconscious protest and
in that protest a lesson? Perhaps a segment of that protest
is against a scheme of standardized, industrial civilization,
so efficiently standardized that tens of thousands of human
beings are counted among the fortunate because they are
given an opportunity to push a piece of tin under a machine
which will punch a few holes in it or perhaps the chance
to attach a small part to something destined to become a
motor car, as it passes before them on a revolving belt?” 1
,/Since it is generally recognized today that most prejudice
is socially conditioned, the problem of eradicating anti-
Semitism obviously involves much larger issues than the
proponents of “intercultural” understanding would seem
to imply. “Freedom from fear,” Dr. Clyde Kluckholn said
in a recent speech, “is the best way to cure group prejudice.
This means freedom from the fear of war, from the fear of
economic insecurity, from the fear of personal unworthi-
ness. . . . The frustrations of modem life are sufficient to
breed any number of latent and unconscious prejudices. In
the larger sense these are more threatening than any specific
overt manifestations that have yet occurred. For ‘race*
prejudice is not isolated — it is a part of a chain of ten-
dencies .” 2 It is certainly no accident that the number of
lynchings in fourteen southern states in the years from 1882
to 1930 correlated with the annual per acre value of cotton
to the extent of — .67. The conditions that breed racial

226

A Mask for Privilege

antagonisms will not be exorcised by avowals of eternal
brotherhood pronounced in unison once a year during
Brotherhood Week. /

Today there is a dangerous tendency to narrow the in-
quiry into so-called “group tensions” by focusing attention
exclusively upon the minutiae of the problem, upon the
oddities and quirks of prejudice, on the fascinating patho-
logical detail. In the last few years, I have attended dozens
of “intercultural workshops” and “interracial conferences”
where the problem of prejudice was discussed much as a
group of theologians might discuss original sin. We need to
be reminded, as Dr. Frederic Wertham puts it, “that the
soap produced in Nazi death factories was not a by-product
of sadism to be understood in individual psychological terms.
It was produced as a commodity.”

2 . REMOVE THE BARRIERS
The problem of democracy is so to perfect the organization
of society that every man and every group may have the freest
possible opportunity to realize and perfect their natures, and
to attain the excellence appropriate to their kind.

— HORACE KAJLLEN

Granted that anti-Semitism and related issues can never
be divorced from the larger problems of which they are a
part, what is most needed in the United States today is the
development of a concept of functional equality. Such a
concept should be based on several obvious assumptions:
i)-that individuals are not responsible for the color of their
kin, the place where they were born, or for their ancestry;
£>.)xthat in point of scientific fact as well as moral theory

No Ordinary Task 227

all individuals should be regarded as equals since they differ
in capacity, intelligence, and human worth not as groups
but as individuals; (c) that nowadays a measure of equality
must prevail if individuals are to function as responsible
citizens of a democracy and if democratic government is to
function effectively in a highly industrialized mass produc-
tion economy; (d) that to be fully effective such a concept
should be universally recognized and (e) that the mere
recognition of human rights, however adequately defined,
will not in itself guarantee their free exercise.

Such a conceptualization of human rights is being evolved
today by the Commission on Human Rights of the United
Nations. It has been proposed to the commission that such
a code should affirm the obligation of all member states
to insure equality before the law of all inhabitants “with-
out qualification or distinction as to race, sex, language, or
religion”; that all member states be requested to enact
without delay such legislation as will be necessary to im-
plement the code; that member states should take positive
and continuous action to insure the full and effective appli-
cation of the code through agencies set up for this purpose;
and that provision be made for appeal from any decision
of the commission to the General Assembly. 8

In the United States the problem is one not of securing
the recognition of certain basic human rights, but of insur-
ing their application; of spelling out, in some detail, just
what is embraced within the broad guarantees of the Con-
stitution. What we need is a program of social and political
action aimed at bringing about, in the phrase of Justice
Harlan, “a state of universal civic freedom.” Embraced in
such a concept of functional equality would be equal edu-

228 A Mask for Privilege

cational opportunities for all; equal economic opportunities
regardless of race, creed, or color; equal access to good
housing; equal access to health and medical facilities; equal
access to publicly supported recreational, cultural, and civic
facilities of all kinds; equal access to common civic con-
veniences, such as hotels, restaurants, common carriers, and
places of public accommodation; equal enforcement of
the law; equal protection of civil and political rights;
and, as a variant of the concept of religious freedom, a
degree of equality in personal relations (for example, the
right of individuals to marry regardless of racial differ-
ences). In the implementation of some such concept
is to be found the best answer to the problem of anti-
Semitism.

What the achievement of these objectives requires is the
formation of “a great, special camp” of all the democratic
forces in the United States. Progress has been made in this
direction, but the movement itself is still embryonic. Today
there are some 700 separate organizations actively interested
in some phase of the problem, usually on behalf of a par-
ticular minority. At the local level some unification of these
forces has been achieved and there are now two state-wide
organizations (in California and Colorado) ; but as yet their
activities have not been unified on a national scale. This is
the obvious next step. For the power to carry such a pro-
gram into effect exists today.in the United States, if it were
properly organized. It is to be found in the churches —
Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant; in the labor unions; in
the minority groups; in literally hundreds of civic, social,
and fraternal organizations; and, above all, in the strong
appeal which the American tradition of “equal opportunity”

No Ordinary Task 229

has for most of the American people. Where these groups
have been united, as in the campaign to enact the Quinn-
Ives Bill in New York, they have generally prevailed; but
for lack of a common objective — a unifying and dynamic
concept — they more often function in a kind of splendid
isolation. The problem of implementing a concept of func-
tional equality poses not a question in techniques or know-
how, nor a question of power; the problem is really one of
leadership and organization.

Fortunately we now have in the report of the President’s
Committee on Civil Rights a specific program in support
of which public opinion can be organized. Here, for the
first time, the federal government has taken an inventory
of civil rights, noting the areas of weakness and pointing
out how and by what means the exercise of these rights can
be strengthened. Here, at long last, is a clear recognition
that merely to declare certain rights is not to insure their
exercise; that a laissez-faire attitude toward civil rights is
nowadays inadequate and anachronistic; that the main threat
to the exercise of these rights comes from so-called “private
groups” and that, in consequence, an affirmative approach
must be projected. All of this represents a new departure in
American thinking. When Brothers Under the Skin was
published in 1943, 1 was taken to task by liberal editors for
suggesting that the power and the prestige of the federal
government could, and should, be used to prevent dis-
crimination. I finally got so annoyed with editorial re-
minders that “the law follows the mores” and that “legisla-
tion cannot prevent discrimination” that I wrote a pamphlet
to prove that, in one sense, just the reverse of these proposi-
tions is true — namely, that the mores are often shaped by

230 A Mask for Privilege

the law and that discrimination creates perhaps more preju-
dice than it reflects.

While the report of the President’s committee has certain
weaknesses and skirts certain issues, nevertheless if its
recommendations were adopted they would go a long way
toward the creation of a real functional equality in Ameri-
can life. Here, then, is a summary of the recommendations:
(1) The committee proposes to strengthen, in a number of
ways, the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice
(an excellent recommendation) . (2) To amend and supple-
ment Sections 51 and 52 of the United States Code so as
to clar ify the right of the federal authorities to intervene
where rights secured by the Constitution are violated.
(3) To protect the right to vote in federal elections by the
elimination of the poll tax and the adoption of laws pro-
tecting the right of all qualified persons to vote in federal
primaries and elections. (4) The enactment by Congress
and the states of legislation requiring groups which attempt
to influence public opinion to disclose pertinent facts about
themselves through a systematic registration procedure.
(5) The elimination of segregation based on race, color,
or creed, including the enactment of a Fair Employment
Practices Act (here the report is weak since it throws the
whole issue, with the exception of fair employment prac-
tices, back to the states, whereas it might have recommended
a new federal civil rights act, or, as I suggested in Brothers
Under the Skin, a fair racial practices act); nevertheless
this section does contain many excellent suggestions on
how segregation can be eliminated in education, housing,
and other fields. (6) A recommendation that public opinion
be rallied in support of this program by a long-range educa-

No Ordinary Task 231

tion effort. This, of course, is only a summary of the high
lights of the report. By and large, the report is a document
of great historic significance for it constitutes an official
recognition of the great error which was made in 1876
when by a series of court decisions and legislative acts we
permitted the Civil War amendments to be robbed of their
original meaning and intention.

The dynamics for achieving such a program are to be
found in the obligations of the United States under the
United Nations Charter. Under Article 5 5 (c) of the Char-
ter, we are obligated to promote “universal respect for, and
observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for
all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.’’
Under Article 5 6 we are obligated “to take joint and sepa-
rate action in co-operation with the organization for the
achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55.” In the
Act of Chapultepec, signed in Mexico City on March 6 ,
1945, the United States agreed, in concert with the other
signatory nations, “to make every effort to prevent in their
respective countries all acts which provoke discrimination
among individuals because of race or religion.” Ratified as
treaties, the United Nations Charter and the Act of Cha-
pultepec define a federal responsibility in the clearest
possible terms.

If it be asked, then, where the line is to be drawn be-
tween the right of voluntary associations to exclude and
the right of the state to protect citizens against discrimina-
tion, the answer is to be. found in a distinction between
those actions which directly affect a person’s rights — to a
job; to live in whatever residential district he desires and
can afford; and to enjoy, on a basis of equality, such amuse-

232 A Mask for Privilege

ment, educational, recreational, and cultural facilities as
may be available — and those exclusions which have no re-
lation to civic or functional rights. Such a concept of func-
tional equality enlarges rather than narrows the right of
individuals to associate on a basis of complete freedom of
choice. There is certainly nothing authoritarian in the sug-
gestion that all voluntary associations in a democracy should
be encouraged to set up standards of membership and
eligibility that are consistent with the premises upon which
democracy rests, however arbitrary or exacting they may
be in other respects.

The importance of this issue of “private governments”
can be grasped if two historical considerations are kept in
mind: that the original American conception of freedom
and equality was that of freedom from governmental con-
trols and equality before the government (that is, its courts
and such); and, second, that we have always allowed an
extraordinary and largely unrestricted freedom to private
associations and groups (what I call “private govern-
ments”). With the government playing a laissez-faire role
in relation to civil rights and the “private governments”
growing in power, the most serious inroads have been
made on the conception of democratic citizenship. It took
a Civil War to get “due process” and “equal protection”
clauses which would limit the power of state governments;
but we are still in a twilight zone so far as recognizing that
the “private governments,” in a limited sense, must also be
made to comply with certain constitutional policies.

Admittedly there is much to be said for the pluralistic
philosophy which would allow great scope and freedom to
“private governments,” for this is one way of offsetting

No Ordinary Task 233

the tendency toward concentration of power in the federal
government. But a trade-union, a “private” school, an in-
dustry, a company town, a corporation, a political party,
can, by various discriminatory practices, maike a mockery
of rights secured by the Constitution. Many of these as-
sociations are in effect “governmental instrumentalities”
and on this theory alone, should be subject to certain regu-
lations; then, too, many of their functions are essentially
governmental and should be brought into compliance with
constitutional requirements; frequently the rule or regula-
tion of the private government is enforced by recourse to
the state courts and thus, in effect, represents “state action”
within the meaning of the construction that the courts have
placed on the Fourteenth Amendment. It should also be
pointed out that many private governments enjoy govern-
mental support in one form or another, such as tax exemp-
tion.

The question, therefore, is where does one draw the line
between the legitimate freedom which should be allowed
private governments and the point at which the federal
government must intervene to prevent their regulations
from impinging on civil rights? Now, no one has suggested
that a Jewish boy should be able to penetrate a restricted
fraternity by a sheriff’s writ, although public opinion, in a
democracy, should constantly seek to induce all associa-
tions to abandon voluntarily discriminations based solely
on race, color, or creed. The line is not to be drawn arbi-
trarily but by balancing the interest of the community in
the preservation of democratic values against such rights
as freedom of contract. It is not every ethnic discrimina-
tion, therefore, that would warrant intervention. The right

234 4 Mask for Privilege

impinged may be of slight social value. But where the
private association discriminates in the area of what I have
called “functional” rights — health, housing, education, em-
ployment, and so forth — then the government should in-
tervene.

On this point the report of the President’s committee is
quite clear and what the report has to say about education
indicates the basis on which we should “draw the line”:

The Committee is absolutely convinced of the importance
of the private educational institution to a free society. It does
not question the right of groups of private citizens to establish
such institutions, determine their character and policies, and
operate them. But it does believe that such schools immediately
acquire a public character and importance/ Invariably they en-
joy government support, if only in the form of exemption from
taxation and in the privilege of income-tax deduction extended
to their benefactors. Inevitably, they render public service by
training young people for life in a democratic society. Conse-
quently, they are possessed of a public responsibility from
which there is no escape, (p. 66)

g>m>

The Committee is not convinced that an end to segregation
in education or in the enjoyment of public services essential to
people in a modem society would mean an intrusion upon the
private life of the individual. In a democracy, each individual
must have freedom to choose his friends and to control the
pattern of his personal and family life. But we see nothing in-
consistent between this freedom and a recognition of the truth
that democracy also means that in going to school, working,
participating in the political process, serving in the armed
forces, enjoying government services in such fields as health
and recreation, making use of transportation and other public
accommodation facilities, and living in specific communities

No Ordinary Task 235

and neighborhoods, distinctions of race, color, and creed have
no place, (p. 87 )

Nor does the concept of functional equality in any man-
ner interfere with what has been called “the right to be
different.” For example, the Central Conference of Ameri-
can Rabbis at its 5 8th annual convention affirmed its stand
against “mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews with-
out conversion.” 4 The right to make this affirmation is in
no manner inconsistent with the position that miscegena-
tion statutes constitute an arbitrary interference with the
personal rights and privileges of individuals and should,
therefore, be repealed. “If,” says Dr. Kluckholn, “indi-
viduals of all backgrounds will accept persons of all other
backgrounds not ‘in their place,’ not as exotics but as
individuals, then we shall have created something new in
the world.” If it be said, as it always is said, that a broad
policy aimed at eliminating all forms of discrimination
would tend to obliterate “differences” and thereby rob
America of its cultural diversity, the answer is that a false
emphasis upon diversity can come dangerously close to a
type of separatism basically inconsistent with the patterns
of democracy. The right to. be different should not be
confused with the artificial preservation of differences.
“The United States,” to quote Dr. Kluckholn agaiii, “must
be made safe for differences, so long as these are not a
threat to a certain minimum of national solidarity. But this
does not mean that differences should be artificially resusci-
tated or their preservation demanded. . . . Any culture is,
more than anything else, a set of solutions, a delicate ad-
justment, to a particular set of environmental problems.

236 A Mask for Privilege

When situations change, culture changes. Designs fpr living
that make a great deal of sense in Swiss mountain valleys
make very little sense when the same people try to continue
them in Chicago or on the plains of Kansas. Respect for
cultural variation must begin at home. But this means re-
spect for those variations that are appropriate and not a
threat to the social order. It does not mean that we must
try to make the United States into a cultural museum.”

5. PREJUDICE IS INDIVISIBLE
While the discrimination against Jews is neither as visible
nor as severe as that against racial minorities, it is quite
apparent that their stake in the achievement of a functional
equality for all citizens is as great as any other minority.
In the key areas of housing, education, and employment,
they are directly involved. A surprisingly large number of
.subdivisions in American cities are restricted against “per-
sons of Jewish or Hebrew descent.” Quite recently public
attention was directed to two new subdivisions in Austin,
Texas, that were advertised as being restricted against Jew-
ish occupancy. Asked for an explanation, the subdivider
put it this way: “One of my best friends is Jewish, but
this is a cold-blooded free enterprise business.” 0 A restric-
tion in Roanoke is aimed at Negroes, Greeks, Assyrians, “or
any person who belongs to any race, creed, or sect which
holds, recognizes or observes any day of the week other
than the first day of the week to be the Sabbath . . . or any
corporation or clan composed of or controlled by any such
group”! That such a case should have arisen in Virg inia —

No Ordinary Task 237

the cradle of religious liberty in the United States — is an
ironic commentary on our schizoid culture.

A study of Jewish residential settlement in any large or
medium-sized American city will reveal that external pres-
sures have played an important role in restricting the area
of settlement. As Louis Wirth demonstrated in The Ghetto
(1928), Jews have generally settled in a primary area, a
kind of modified ghetto district, from which they have
moved, not into the contiguous or adjacent districts, but
into districts usually far removed from the original area.
This outward movement has usually been made “in jumps
and spurts” and has been motivated, in part, by a desire “to
escape into anonymity,” a flight which tends to be cumu-
lative, for the ghetto keeps following the Jew. “Unwit-
tingly,” writes Wirth, “the deserters from the ghetto have
become the founders of a new ghetto.” This pattern has
been particularly noticeable in hotels and apartments, types
of residence that offer the promise of anonymity. Since
Gentiles have been known to move out when the first Jew
moves in, the process tends to be repeated. It is thus absurd
to contend that clannishness alone can. account for the
clusters of Jewish settlement to be found in most Ameri-
can cities.

The stake that Jews have in the fight against discrimina-
tion in employment is so obvious that little comment is
required. While all minorities have an equal concern with
fair employment practices, the issue should be of greater
concern to Jews today than ever before. Wherever bu-
reaucracies have developed, whether in business or in
government, the feasibility of excluding Jews has been

238 A Mask for Privilege

enhanced. “At a time,” writes Nathan Reich, “when ever-
increasing numbers of young Jews will have to seek
employment in large corporations or government agen-
cies; when the opinion of personnel managers may decide
the fate of thousands of job-seekers, the ‘social’ prejudice
of those in charge of employment policy acquires a new
and menacing significance.” 6

So far as Jews are concerned, no form of discrimination
should be opposed more vigorously than the quota system.
It has been said that educational quotas are democratic
since fit is their purpose to ration educational opportunities
in rough approximation to the size of the various racial and
ethnic groups. Since we have a certain number of Jews,
Catholics, and Negroes, so the argument runs, we should
have a certain number of Jewish doctors, Catholic lawyers,
and Negro dentists. But this contention, as Dr. Robert Red-
field has pointed out, is tantamount to a denial of “the
American assumption that men of all religious and all ethnic
origins may come to acquire the capacities for carrying on
the common life .” 7 It assumes, furthermore, that Jewish
doctors will only serve Jewish patients. The hypocrisy of
the argument is best demonstrated by its inconsistency .)
Quoting Yves R. Simon, Dr. Redfield says that he will be-
lieve with Pascal in the sincerity of those witnesses who
allow themselves to be martyred. Until the advocates of the
quota system urge quotas for white, Protestant, Anglo-
Saxon students, one is justified in questioning the sincerity
of their position.

It is also said that quotas are necessary to preserve some
special quality of a college or university, as being primarily
“Christian” or “Baptist” or “nonurban.” But this assumes

No Ordinary Task . 239

that private educational institutions should not be respon-
sive to changing needs in a democratic society. Since these
institutions insist that their “special quality” contributes to
the total affirmation of American values, they can hardly
defend, in good conscience, a practice which violates one
of the most basic tenets of American democracy, namely,
“that nothing granted to one citizen is to be denied another
by reason solely of his membership in a racial or religious
group.”

Frequently this argument is used in reverse. To be thor-
oughly representative of American democracy, it is con-
tended that institutions must impose restrictions against
certain racial or religious groups. But which institution is
the more thoroughly representative of American values:
the one that arbitrarily seeks a “cross-sectional” representa-
tion or the one that firmly adheres to the American prin-
ciple of equality in educational opportunities? Again it is
argued that quotas are necessary to minimize anti-Semitism.
If Jews urged this argument upon non-Jews, it might have
some validity. But, as Dr. Redfield asks, “is there not some-
thing disingenuous in one, not a Jew, who contends that
the Jew is his own worst enemy and that to keep him from
inj xiring himself by pushing his case too far, he, the non-
Jew, should limit the enrollment of Jews, when it is
remembered that it will be the self-appointed protector’s
own group that will do the threatened damage to the Jew?”

The quota system can be successfully attacked along
three lines: through the pressure of lawsuits and protests
aimed at eliminating the tax-exempt status of quota institu-
tions unless these institutions agree to adhere to a nonquota
system; through legislative enactments designed to compel

24 ° Mask for Privilege

adherence to such a policy; and through the development
of an organized public opinion against quotas. Some years
ago, for example, the presidents of twelve American uni-
versities asked President Roosevelt to appoint a Fair Educa-
tional Practices Commission. The suggestion has great merit
and should be adopted. If, through pressure of public
opinion, all educational institutions agreed to abandon
quotas, and were to do so at the same time, no one insti-
tution would suffer any temporary disadvantage, real or
imagined, by comparison with any other. '

The fight against the quota system needs to be corre-
lated with the fight against segregated schools, for quotas
are merely a polite form of segregation. The movement to
abolish quotas should also be closely correlated with the
campaign for fair employment practices. Any number of
vocational guidance clinics can be set up to advise young
Jews not to enter the free professions, but they will con-
tinue to do so as long as they encounter discriminatory
employment practices in American industry. While much
progress has already been made in the effort to abolish
quotas, a strong opposition has of late been voiced against
the movement in the name of “freedom of educational in-
stitutions.” 8 It should be observed that in these three key
areas of housing, employment, and education, the opposi-
tion to Jews has been stiffening for the last two or three
decades.

The method of combating racism outlined in this sec-
tion — the “law and social action” approach — is one of the
most effective methods in use today. Here legal techniques
are fused with social science insights in concerted cam-
paigns to break down the pattern of discrimination in edu-

No Ordinary Task 241

cation, employment, housing, and related fields. Campaigns
of this sort have great educational value, both for the
organizations which conduct them and for the general
public. They also have the merit of focusing attention upon
specific aspects of discrimination, of high-lighting the facts,
of setting people in motion. Remarkable headway has been
made in this field of recent years and one might well rest
the case for the effectiveness of this approach by calling
attention to some of the excellent work of the Law and
Social Action Commission of the American Jewish Congress.

4. DEFINE A REAL SCAPEGOAT
[t goes without saying that anti-Semitism must be com-
bated through education: at every level and by every
proved means and technique, particularly through mass
education in political and social action. A vast amount of
money is currently being spent on educational programs
to combat racism in general and anti-Semitism in particular.
But it has only been of recent years that these programs
have been subjected to scientific tests to determine their
effectiveness. It is apparent from these studies that a great
deal of money has been wasted, and is being wasted, in
large-scale educational projects of one kind or another.
Other studies in the social sciences have demonstrated the
kinds of educational programs that have proved their effi-
ciency .^Generally speaking, educational programs to com-
bat racism, both in and out of the schools, should be more
closely related to research in the social sciences, and the
effectiveness of particular programs should be constantly
checked by scientific tests.

242 A Mask for Privilege

Granted the maximum effectiveness, however, there are
limits to what can be accomplished solely through educa-
tion. “If you want my watch,” writes Maurice Samuel,
“or my job, you will find it much easier to set about getting
it if the action is accompanied by a process of self-propa-
ganda: that is, if you first prove to yourself that I killed
your God, or violated your culture, or that I eat soup
noisily and fail to salute your flag. It will then do me no
good to prove that the Romans killed your God, or that
your God is nine-tenths myth, that I contribute to your
culture, that I eat soup quietly and am extremely patriotic.
The better my arguments, the angrier you will get; in the
last analysis, you will relieve me of my watch for being
too clever in defending my possession of it.” 10 Since stereo-
types rationalize relationships, it is apparent that the rela-
tionships must be changed, in some respects, before the
re-education of the individual can be complete.

A major weakness of most educational programs to
combat racism is that they fail to define a legitimate scape-
goat— that is, they fail to define the real sources of
frustration. Such an effort should be directed toward
interpreting, particularly to the middle class, the nature
of the social forces operating in our society. The inter-
pretation should be accompanied, of course, by a statement
of realizable goals and of the various steps by which these
goals might be achieved. The weakness of most “antifas-
cist” political and educational activity has consisted in its
defensive character. It is not enough that fascist trends
should be opposed, for much of this activity is directed at
symptoms rather than at causes. Starting with some emer-
gency of the moment, the prodemocratic elements exhaust

No Ordinary Task 243

themselves in defeating a particular drive only to discover
that the same effort must be repeated a week later. What
is so obviously needed is a strong and sustaining mass move-
ment with goals that could fire the imagination of people
above and beyond a concern for the petty interests of the
moment and the purely short-range objectives.

In periods of social crisis, fascist demagogues take skill-
ful advantage of the tendency, as Ellis Freeman puts it,
“to cling to the falsehoods and frauds of good repute, not
necessarily through congenital stupidity or any other innate
predispositions but because of deficient opportunities to
learn better.” In other words, fascism thrives on social be-
wilderment. Almost every study of fascist movements has
emphasized that the mass following of such movements has
been made up of people who have been overwhelmed by
the social confusion of the times. Unable to understand this
confusion and not receiving an acceptable explanation of its
causes, they have taken refuge out of desperation in the
dogmatic certainties of fascism.

Perhaps the least effective educational method in use
today consists in the distribution of what is termed “toler-
ance propaganda.” Here an enormous amount of money is
being wasted. It is fairly well established, for example, that
more than $1,000,000 a year is now being spent on well-
intentioned propaganda campaigns of this sort. The idea
behind these campaigns is that it is possible to sell “toler-
ance” as one would sell tooth paste. But as Dr. Paul F.
Lazarfeld demonstrated in a memorandum submitted to the
President’s Committee on Civil Rights, tests have shown
that this propaganda is often of dubious value and that it
frequently has a “boomerang” effect. As he points out.

244 A Mask for Privilege

“people have a remarkable ability for assimilating propa-
ganda to their existing attitudes so that these attitudes re-
main intact.” While something is to be gained by propa-
ganda methods, the propaganda should be pretested for its
effect and there should be some follow-up to determine
its results.

Research in the social sciences can provide a scientific
basis for experiments in mass education. That anti-Semitism
is so often found as part of an interconnected “system of
ideas” should prompt, for example, additional research on
the techniques by which this system can be changed. Which
parts of the system are most vulnerable to attack? What
are the interconnections which hold these ideas together
in a single complex? Is it possible to direct an educational
attack at the entire system?

Where social scientists have made their greatest con-
tribution is in the field of child training and personality
formation. Early childhood experiences and parent-child
relationships have been found to have a bearing — how
important has yet to be determined — on the development
of attitudes hostile or friendly toward groups other than the
one into which the child is born. Part of the long-range
problem, therefore, is “to modify our institutions, particu-
larly our child-rearing institutions, the home and the school,
in such a manner that secure and loving, rather than insecure
and hate-ridden, personalities are produced .” 11 But since
these institutions never function in a vacuum, the real
scrutiny must always be focused upon the larger social
pattern.

To be effective, education against racism should empha-
size the real causes of fascism. At the end of a nationwide

No Ordinary Task 245

speaking tour, devoted to exposing fascist trends in the
United States, O. John Rogge recently said that he had
found “an appalling lack of information and a desperate
need for education. Many of the people to whom I spoke
were hearing a speech about fascism for the first time.
Some of them had already accepted parts of a fascist pro-
gram, completely unaware that their prejudices and atti-
tudes were antidemocratic. Too many of them would not
recognize a fascist if they heard him speak or if they read
his propaganda — provided he didn’t have a thick German
accent and kept a swastika off his printed material.” Nothing
points to the danger of fascism more clearly than the fact
that, although a congressional committee on un-American
activities has been in existence since the middle thirties, we
have yet to have a thoroughgoing investigation of fascist
intrigue in the United States. As a postscript, one notes
that the Rogge report was suppressed by the Department
of Justice and that Rogge was fired from his position as
Assistant Attorney General under the most curious circum-
stances.

Education should also expose the bogus countertradition
that has developed in the United States. A pattern of preju-
dice against certain groups has been interwoven in Ameri-
can culture; but this culture also contains the conflicting
pattern of equality. The resolution of this “American
dilemma” must involve a frank recognition of the conflict
and an effort to uproot the spurious countertradition. Con-
fused by the presence of two traditions, many Americans
seem to experience great difficulty in distinguishing between
the real tradition and its bogus counterpart. When Senator
McKellar suggests that the chairmanship of the Atomic

246 A Mask for Privilege

Energy Commission should be limited by law to “a second-
generation native American,” he is appealing to this bogus
countertradition. One must acknowledge with shame that
the fight against David Lilienthal was motivated, in part,
by the circumstance that he is of Jewish descent. Comparing
this fight with the earlier fight to confirm the nomination of
Brandeis, Marquis Childs pointed out that “the same poison
of racism colors not a little of the prejudice against Lilien-
thal. It is whispered in the Senate cloakroom and proclaimed
when lobbyists and special pleaders meet.” u When Senator
Bilbo charged that “Jewish and Negro minorities are trying
to destroy our freedom and the American way of life,” and
when Congressman Rankin interrupts the testimony of
William Bullitt to inquire if it isn’t true that most Jews
are Communists, it is the false, the un-American tradition
that echoes in the halls of Congress.

Still another education method for combating racism in-
volves an attempt to change the attitude of groups by creat-
ing new group experiences, more particularly by creating
new institutions with new patterns of human relations. In
our society, individual prejudices are fortified by, and often
coerced by, the attitude of the group to which the individual
belongs. To educate the individual to the folly of racism it
is often valuable to create a new group relationship. Studies
have shown, for example, that most “white” Americans are
in favor of residential segregation for Negroes; but few of
them have ever lived in the same neighborhoods with
Negroes and know nothing about Negroes as neighbors.
The experience of public housing projects where mixed
occupancy prevails demonstrates that prejudice tends to
break down under the impact of the new pattern of re-

No Ordinary Task 247

lationships. Here the re-education of the individual is likely
to be real, for it is based upon a new experience, a new re-
lationship, and not upon the assimilation of certain factual
information in a pamphlet. While “organized group ex-
periences” of this sort are often of real value, it too fre-
quently happens that the new institution — the school, the
housing project, the summer camp — is isolated in the larger
community like an island in the ocean. The importance of
creating new relationships, however, cannot be overempha-
sized. Most “white” Americans know Negroes in only a
few relationships: landlord and tenant; seller and buyer;
master and servant. These are not relationships likely to
make for mutual understanding and appreciation. Much
better relationships are those of fellow classmates, neigh-
bors, membership in the same trade-union, fellow employee,
and so forth.

/ .

/ The campaign to combat racism in America demands
that every individual American citizen accept full and
conscious responsibility for his public and private acts.
“The mores,” writes Dr. Robert Redfield, “are not extra-
human pressures, like the weight of the atmosphere or the
pull of gravity. They are not something external to the
wishes and the sentiments of men. They are the wishes and
the sentiments of men (so far as imbued with a sense of
rightness), and men change their wishes and their sentiments
in response to what other men do and in response to what
they themselves do. If one man or one institution takes a
public position against racial prejudice so as to make
effective an equality as among racial groups that was be-
fore denied, that act gives encouragement to all others

248 A Mask for Privilege

whose attitudes inclined toward equality and justice but
who were held from acting in accordance with their in-
clination by uncertainty or timidity or other causes. . . .
Whether we like it or not, our every act of discrimination
or of equal treatment as between ethnic groups is an in-
fluence upon the general attitudes of the community. If
we act so as to bring about just treatment of all citizens, the
people of our community will, on the whole, tend to up-
hold that justice; if we act unjustly, then men will be
helped to excuse their unjust attitudes. We are not helpless
to reduce discrimination in the community.”

Without waiting for the millennium, any individual
American citizen can do certain things to combat racism,
and I know of no better advice on what he can do than
that recently offered by Dr. Clyde Kluckholn:

We can treat people as people rather than as representatives
of ethnic groups. We can show our friends how absurd it is
to think of whole segments of the population as “all bad” or
“all good.” We can discredit the sadists in our own circle of
acquaintances. We can ridicule and deflate demagogues and
rabble rousers. We can circulate jokes that bring out the
American virtues of fair play and tolerance at the expense of
Jew-baiters. We can do our part to see to it that newspapers
and radios represent those in the process of assimilation as en-
joying general support rather than as weak and isolated. In our
own talk we can emphasize the facts of assimilation and ad-
justment as much as the facts — both “desirable” and “undesir-
able” — of differences. We can insist that our leaders continue
to express their disapproval of attempts to arouse ethnic strife.
We can expose the attempts of the unscrupulous, whether in
government, industry or labor, to turn the hatred of the citi-
zenry from their real enemies upon innocent scapegoats. We
can raise children who are more secure and freer so that they
do not have an inner need to hurt and to attack. We can in-

No Ordinary Task 249

crease, each of us, our own self-understanding, winning greater
freedom and a higher degree of responsible behavior, as we
gain deeper insight into our own motives. . . .

If we can do these things within our own country — if we
can treat assimilation as something other than a one-way proc-
ess, if we can feel the pride we ought to feel in the diverse ori-
gins of our ideas and customs, then we shall be able to take
leadership in world acceptance of cultural diversity. We shall
also need to alter situations — perhaps the structure of our econ-
omy. For under certain arrangements of the social order, re-
spect for others cannot become general — no matter how fine
the ideals.

Men do very difficult things, if they are thoroughly realized
as being profoundly necessary, more adequately than they do
easy things. The people’s capacity must be believed in, and
the present and permanent task of democracy is to affirm that
capacity and to seek the ways to enable it to prevail. It is the
challenges which seem to be little — not the ones recognized
as big — to which people do not rise. They can rise to the
challenge of peace, as they did to the challenge of war. The
strength of a democratic world order will be, not merely that
it will allow the individual an enjoyment procured through
security and through conveniences, but that it will call upon
him for greatness.

Americans determined to accept this type of individual
responsibility might well start, at this time, by advocating
a liberal policy of immigration and the removal of dis-
criminatory bars, racial and otherwise, from existing im-
migration and naturalization laws.

5. TAKE AWAY THE WHIP
When I see a driver abusing his weary horse so mercilessly
with his whip that the beast’s veins and its nerves quiver, and
one of the passive if compassionate bystanders asks me: what

2 jo A Mask for Privilege

can be done? I must tell him: first take the whip away from
that savage.

— JACOB WASSERMANN

One of the reasons that minority groups perform a scape-
goat function is simply that they are weak. By strengthen-
ing the position of minorities, the temptation to use them
as whipping boys can be minimized if not eliminated. Need-
less to say, this does not involve conferring special rights
or group privileges upon minorities. For the protection
offered, say, by an FEPC statute applies to all individuals;
not to any particular group. There is one facet of the issue,
however, which does have a special relation to the problem
of anti-Semitism.

As its history universally confirms, anti-Semitism is a
formidable weapon. The organized use of this weapon
should not be countenanced in a civilized society. If soci-
ety can outlaw physical instrumentalities of destruction, it
should be able to protect individuals against the systematic
use of a social weapon which universal experience has
shown to be no less dangerous and destructive. Using new
means of mass communication, fascist groups have per-
fected the weapon of systematic defamation. In its early
stages, a fascist movement uses verbal violence as the pre-
cursor for the physical violence that will come later. Syste-
matic defamation has the effect of welding the profascist
elements into a unified force by concentrating their hatreds
and aggressions against a particular minority. Provocative
by intention, these verbal assaults can reach a pitch of vio-
lence that a democratic society cannot afford to ignore.
By fastening the charge of violating civil liberties on their
opponents, fascist demagogues cleverly demoralize public

No Ordinary Task 251

opinion. Through a fantastic perversion of the real issues,
they emerge as the defenders of law, order, and free speech
while systematically undermining respect for law and
order and deliberately corroding the concept of free speech.

The division of opinion that exists today on this issue
constitutes the best proof that a reconsideration of our
traditional laissez-faire attitude toward civil liberties is
needed. Faced with the difficult task of ret hink ing certain
concepts, many liberals have preferred to take refuge in
“the certainties of inaction.” Being chronic perfectionists,
they have been reluctant to experiment with new tactics
and strategies simply because these measures cannot be re-
garded as perfect solutions to particular problems. Never-
theless one can detect a gradually developing awareness
of the limitations of the laissez-faire attitude toward civil
liberties. In one of the best studies of the constitutional
issues, David Riesman has suggested that the law of civil
libel should be reframed to permit actions for group def-
amation; 13 while the late A. H. Pekelis urged that groups
defamed should defend themselves by taking the issues
directly to the public by such means as picket lines,
demonstrations, and public meetings. The essence of his
proposal consists in the suggestion that minorities should
assert a right — namely, the right to be free of systematic
vilification and organized abuse. 14

The key to the problem, it seems to me, is to be found
in the distinction between unorganized and organized def-
amation; between individual slander and conspiracies to
violate the rights of citizens of the United States. Govern-
ment cannot assume the formidable task of supervising
propaganda; but it should be able to protect citizens against

z 52 A Mask for Privilege

an organized assault upon their rights, as citizens, just as it
protects them against physical violence. It is rather absurd
to contend that a modern government can protect a Jewish
merchant against vandalism but that it is powerless to pro-
tect him against an organized campaign to violate his civil
rights. Our real concern should be not so much with anti-
Semitic propaganda as with organized racism. Mein Kampf
is a good example of anti-Semitic propaganda; but it should
be read and carefully studied by those who believe in
democracy.

It was this distinction between private opinion and
organized agitation that Heywood Broun once sought to
define. “Where, then,” he asked, “does one draw the line
across which the legal right changes into a moral wrong?
It might be placed at the point where personal feeling
denies to others the right to earn a living; it becomes a
social menace where a concerted understanding saddles
onto a class a burden of economic disability” (emphasis
added). As Dr. Milton Steinberg has said, “The state can-
not enact affection between Gentiles and Jews. What non-
Jews think about their Jewish fellows is legally their busi-
ness. But how non- Jews behave in this respect is another
matter, and one of more than private concern. Not only
the welfare of the Jews, but the tranquility of the com-
munity and perhaps ultimately the peace of the world may
be involved. In the teeth of these considerations it is arrant
nonsense to contend that the state has no interest in restrain-
ing agitation against racial, cultural or religious groupings
in our midst.” M

Hard as this line may be to draw — and it should be drawn
with great care — the effort should not be abandoned merely

No Ordinary Task 253

because of the difficulties involved. For there is such a line
to be drawn and we are gradually drawing it in practice.
When efforts were launched in 1945 to revive the K.K.K.,
public opinion demanded action. Under the leadership of
Robert W. Kenny, then Attorney General of California,
actions were brought in a number of states to revoke the
corporate charters of K.K.K. groups. Did this type of ac-
tion represent an interference with the right of certain
citizens to be Klansmen? If it did, then the interference
was justified, for what a Klansman thinks and says and
writes is one thing; what he does, in concert with other
Klansmen, is an entirely different thing. Most observers
agree that these actions have arrested the growth of the
Klan.

Following Father Coughlin’s notorious anti-Semitic radio
speech of November 20, 1938, group pressure finally forced
him off the air. Was this an interference with free speech
when his major purpose was to attack a minority group?
Coughlin’s speech was not an isolated statement; he was
the head of the Union of Social Justice which was then con-
ducting a systematic campaign against Jews and his speech
was part of that campaign. When Jewish war veterans
appeared at a meeting of the Columbians and protested
Homer Loomis’s defamatory statements, they were clearly
acting within their rights. Who will contend that Governor
Amall was unlawfully interfering with “the right to hate”
— which Loomis asserted — when he caused his arrest for
incitement to riot?

The same issue was involved in the successful effort
of the American Jewish Congress to induce the Federal
Communications Commission to deny the application of

254 A Mask for Privilege

the Daily News for a permit to operate a radio station. By
the use of the most rigorous scientific techniques, the Con-
gress demonstrated that in the period from 1938 to 1946
the Daily News developed an image of the American Jew
which was far from flattering. Since the air is a natural
monopoly, government has been forced to regulate broad-
casting; and, in doing so, it has set up certain standards of
public service. One of the FCC regulations is that radio
stations shall “treat all races, colors and creeds fairly, with-
out prejudice or ridicule.” Is this an unreasonable require-
ment? Were the groups that caused disciplinary action to
be instituted against a teacher in the New York schools
who had made remarks indicating a sharply biased attitude
toward minority groups guilty of an interference with
“academic freedom”? What these and similar issues indicate
is that the general public can no longer afford to take a
laissez-faire attitude; that the public must find means of
expressing its disapproval of organized defamation.

Without a single addition to the statute books, law en-
forcement officials can protect citizens against most dis-
criminatory actions organized by private groups — if public
opinion demands that such protection be afforded. Every
American city has ordinances that could be used to suppress
various manifestations of organized anti-Semitism, such as
recent acts of vandalism which caused $20,000 damage at
the Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago. 16 In a brief period
in 1946, some eighteen or twenty acts of vandalism were
reported in the city of Los Angeles, including the desecra-
tion of Temple Israel and the destruction of an ancient
Torah that Rabbi Max Nussbaum had managed to bring
from Berlin when he sought refuge in America. None of

No Ordinary Task 255

these acts was punished. In most communities, law enforce-
ment officials simply do not recognize manifestations of
prejudice, even those that involve a clear violation of exist-
ing ordinances, as being criminal in character. What is
needed is an informed public opinion that will demand en-
forcement of all existing laws that could be used to protect
minorities against organized assaults upon their rights.

In federal legislation affirmatively safeguarding civil
rights is to be found the best means, not of outlawing anti-
Semitic propaganda, but of outlawing organized racism. “In
a democracy which knows its own mind,” writes Dr. F.llis
Freeman . . . “it would be difficult for a Fritz Kuhn to
claim that any suppression of his Nazi storm troopers was
also a blow at the right of the Boy Scouts to parade. When a
democracy allows freedom of development to groups, it
is realizing a principle of liberty and consummating itself.
When it extends the same opportunity to forces conducive
to mobs, it is frustrating that principle and slowly stran-
gling itself .” 17

Just as a democracy must distinguish between groups and
mobs, between private opinions and organized racism, so
it may be forced to distinguish between “speech,” in the
sense of communicating ideas, and speech as a weapon of
abuse. Should this necessity arise, the basis for the distinc-
tion has been clearly set forth in Mr. Justice Murphy’s
opinion, for a unanimous court, in Chaplinsky v. New
Hampshire (315 U.S. 568):

Allowing the broadest scope to the language and purpose of
the Fourteenth Amendment, it is well understood that the right
of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circum-
stances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited

2 $6 A Mask for Privilege

classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has
never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These
include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and
the insulting or “fighting” words — those which by their very
utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach
of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances
are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such
slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may
be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social in-
terest in order and morality. Resort to epithets or personal
abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information
or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution, and its punish-
ment as a criminal act would raise no question under that
instrument.

It will be argued, of course, that such distinctions as I
have tried to draw in this section can be appropriated by
undemocratic groups and used, with reverse effect, against
democratic groups. It is obvious that such a risk exists; but
we live in a dynamic society and the social forces operating
in this society will not remain static merely because we
hope that they will. The fascist threat to democracy is a
real threat and the real risk consists in miniinizing this
threat. While I see no objection to group libel statutes and
think they might serve a good purpose (and the same holds
for ordinances prohibiting the distribution of anonymous
material) , I also believe that it is a mistake to place too much
confidence in techniques of this sort. Not only are serious
constitutional issues involved, but it is doubtful if even the
most carefully drawn group libel statute would reach many
of the defamations that one currently encounters. In short,
I would give this particular approach to the problem a low
priority rating.

No Ordinary Task 257

The unmasked and undisguised mob that murdered four
Negroes near Monroe, Georgia, on July 26, 1946, was
psychologically conditioned to commit any crime in the
calendar of Nazi atrocities. Three of the victims were not
suspected of criminal behavior or even of any wrongdoing.
The Nazis who stoked the crematoriums could at least offer
the specious defense that they acted under orders; but no
one ordered the murder of Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, of
Willie Mae and George Dorsey. No callow sophistries such
as Westbrook Pegler’s statement that “bigotry and intoler-
ance are not un-American,” and therefore presumably not
manifestations of fascism, can possibly obscure the reality
of fascist trends in American life today. The occurrence of
such acts and the brief minor revolt of the Columbians
should be a sufficient warning that “fascism is a global dis-
ease, a universal shame, fermenting in the soil of this cen-
tury, breaking out to mutilate the brains and limbs of man-
kind everywhere.” 18

6. “ WHEN THE DEMAGOGUE COMES TO TOWN”
That the issues raised in the foregoing section are real
issues demanding real answers is shown by the confusion
created by the resumption of fascist agitation which began
in the spring of 1945. Lack of basic agreement on questions
of strategy and tactics spread confusion, demoralization,
and dissension in community after community. In far too
many instances, the appearance of Gerald L. K. Smith
precipitated an ideological civil war among his oppo-
nents.

Out of this experience two sharply divergent points of

258 A Mask for Privilege

view have emerged. As generally formulated, the issue is
made to turn on a choice between the so-called “silent”
versus the “noisy” treatment. The silent treatment policy
has been most plausibly argued by Solomon Andhil Fine-
berg in a pamphlet entitled Checkmate for Rabble-Rousers
or What to Do When the Demagogue Comes to Town.
Dr. Fineberg makes a distinction between “prominent” anti-
Semites and the garden variety of native fascist rabble
rousers. While the former cannot be ignored, he argues
that the latter must be dealt with by a policy of planned
silence. Rabble rousers like Smith, so the argument runs,
would be inconsequential were it not for the opposition
which their provocative tactics arouse. In other words,
they thrive on publicity. Therefore communities should
ignore the rabble rouser while attempting to immunize
the people against the virus of his propaganda.

Is it really true, however, that rabble rousers thrive on
opposition? Obviously some types of opposition are cat-
nip to a man like Smith, but he certainly does not relish
all types of opposition. On July 20, 1945, ten thousand
citizens of Los Angeles attended a rally at the Olympic
Auditorium to protest Smith’s activities in Southern Cali-
fornia. The meeting was called for the same evening on
which Smith was scheduled to address a rally at the Shrine
Auditorium. With a miserable attendance at his meeting,
Smith spent most of the evening denouncing the individuals
who had organized the counterdemonstration. Obviously
this was one type of opposition he did not relish.

This same experience demonstrates why the silent treat-
ment cannot be applied, as a uniform policy, under all
circumstances. Smith’s highly provocative speeches had

No Ordinary Task 259

aroused a section of Los Angeles opinion to a high pitch of
excitement. Had the counterdemonstration not been organ-
ized, this feeling of indignation might have assumed a less
constructive form of expression. As a member of the com-
mittee that organized the demonstration, I have a vivid
recollection of the state of community opinion at the time.
The people not only wanted something done, but they
wanted it done publicly so that it could be seen and heard
and felt in the community. If demonstrations of this sort
are planned and carefully organized, the form of expression
can be controlled; but an unchannelized community in-
dignation is likely to assume dangerous modes of expression.

As a result of the anti-Smith mass meeting, a movement
was launched to recall a city councilman who had become
enamored of America First doctrines. The recall of this
councilman had a most tonic effect on official attitudes.
Yet there were liberals in the community who insisted that
the recall movement constituted an improper interference
with the councilman’s right to hold views similar to those
of Gerald L. K. Smith! As part of the recall movement,
opinion polls were taken which revealed that the voters
who knew about Smith were, generally speaking, opposed
to him; but that a high percentage of the voters in the dis-
trict — around 45 per cent to be exact — had never heard
of Smith. Before the recall campaign was successfully con-
cluded, however, this situation had been corrected. On the
other hand, not much in the way of mass education can
be achieved by the wire-pulling or clever maneuvers of a
few top leaders working behind the scenes.

Closely related to the “silent treatment” philosophy is
the emphasis that has long been placed by certain Jewish

160 A Mask for Privilege

organizations on “anti-defamation” work, that is, the in-
vestigation of subversive, organized anti-Semitism. Today
it is generally estimated that more than $250,000 a year is
being spent by private organizations for this type of work.
It would be my guess that this sum is probably in excess of
the total budgets of the subversive groups. While much of
this anti-defamation work is of undeniable importance, in
the past little use has been made of the information so labori-
ously and expensively accumulated. A well-organized Civil
Rights Division in the Department of Justice might, one
would think, well take over this activity.

The dispute over what to do when the rabble rouser
comes to town involves a fundamental division of opinion
on the nature of fascism. Advocates of the silent treatment
seem to regard fascism as a form of social measles, spread
by exposure to fascist propaganda. Fascist tendencies, how-
ever, represent a diseased growth in a contradiction-laden
society and, as such, they will not be overcome by trick
formula or magical incantations. “Fascist groups flourish
or decline,” writes Irving Howe, “because of much deeper
social reasons than the wise or foolish tactics of their op-
ponents. They can be defeated, but they cannot be hushed
into insignificance, for they feed on more substantial food
than noise.” 19 Fascist groups will never, in fact, permit
their opposition to ignore them. If one form of provocation
fails, they will try another and still another until a point is
inevitably reached where the forces opposing them must
take an open, public stand. The real question, therefore, is
whether the opposition should be open or secret, organized
or unorganized.

The form the opposition to fascist tendencies should

26 i

No Ordinary Task

take, in any particular situation, is purely a question of
tactics, to be determined by the facts of each case, the time,
the place, the general political situation, and so forth. It is
impossible to say, as a matter of formal predetermined
policy, that picket lines are desirable or undesirable: it de-
pends on the circumstances. While there is room for dif-
ference of opinion on the question of tactics, there should
be no division whatever on the basic proposition that fascist
tendencies must be opposed in an organized manner, openly,
publicly, democratically. Public demonstrations build up
a sense of confidence in the democratic groups which be-
comes of great importance in offsetting the intimidation
and coercion that inevitably accompany the rise of such
movements. The side that is able to rally the strongest sup-
port at the outset is the side most likely to win the support
of the undecided, the indifferent, and the uninformed.

CHAPTER XI

The Yellow Myth

The Jew is a myth, the myth of German impotence. There
is no more useful myth.

The Jew exists because I have failed. Every time I fail, it is
the fault of the Jew. Each of my failures shows the pattern of
the Jew and all these patterns make up “international Jewry.”

A German has a nightmare. On awakening it is a Jew that
he accuses.

“He wanted to ruin me, to soil me, to kill me.”

“Who?”

“The Jew that hovered over my bed last night. That one,
I recognize him.”

“That cannot be he, he was elsewhere.”

“Then that one. All of them, for if it was not he, it was one
of his.”

— dr. Charles oDic in “ Stepchildren ” of France

To place anti-Semitism in its proper niche in the scheme
of prejudice, one must distinguish between its use as a
weapon — its social function — and its function in the per-
sonality of the bigot. To demonstrate the social function of
anti-Semitism does not explain the predisposition toward
anti-Semitism in the individual. The key to this riddle is to
be found in the existence of certain fairly well delineated
anti-Semitic “types” or personalities. In some obscure man-
ner, anti-Semitism seems to serve a function in these per-
sonalities that closely approximates its larger social function.

While social scientists have made marked progress in

The Yellow Myth 263

isolating certain characteristics of the anti-Semitic types, it
has remained for Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher,
to give us a really satisfactory portrait of the anti-Semite. 1
Sartre starts with the proposition that anti-Semitism cannot
be regarded in the category of mere opinion; on the con-
trary, it is a passion. When the moderate or latent anti-
Semite argues that “there must be something about the
Jews” that accounts for the feeling against them, he is using
logic dictated by passion. It is as though he were to say,
“There must be something about tomatoes because I can’t
bear them.” This quality of the anti-Semitic statement in-
dicates to Sartre that anti-Semitism represents “a syncretic
totality,” that it serves to integrate conflicting tendencies
in a certain type of personality.

The anti-Semitic attitude, as Sartre points out, is not
provoked by personal experiences with Jews nor is it based
upon an observation of Jews as Jews. When a woman says,
“I’ve had a terrible row with furriers, they’ve robbed me,
they’ve burned the furs I entrusted to them. Well, they
were all Jews” — why, asks Sartre, does she hate Jews rather
than furriers? The answer, of course, is that she possessed
a predisposition to anti-Semitism. But this predisposition is
not created by what the Jew does or fails to do; nor by
what he is or is not. If Jewish “differences” were a real
factor, why did the Nazis feel compelled to make the Jews
identify themselves by wearing the Star of David? Sartre
gets to the root of the psychological riddle when he says
that the anti-Semitic passion “ precedes the facts which
should arouse it , it seeks them out to feed upon, it must
even interpret them in its own way in order to render them
really offensive” (emphasis added). The anti-Semite, as

264 A Mask for Privilege

Sartre shrewdly" points out, grows angry because he has
already consented to become angry; because he has willed
in advance “to exist on the passionate level.”

The anti-Semite has chosen to reason falsely because he
feels or experiences “the nostalgia of impermeability.” The
rational man seeks the truth gropingly. Never knowing
where his investigations will carry him or what conclusions
he will finally reach, he is hesitant and doubtful; his con-
clusions are tentative and provisional. But there are people,
writes Sartre, who are attracted by the durability of stone;
who want to be massive and impenetrable because they do
not want to change. It is the very form of truth that
frightens them, for its contents they do not even suspect.
Not wanting to live a life of reason, they insist that reason
be relegated to a subordinate position in the scheme of
things. “They do not want acquired opinions, they want
them to be innate.” If the anti-Semite deigns to defend his
point of view, “he lends himself without giving himself; he
simply tries to project his intuitive certainty onto the field
of speech.” Often he is completely aware of the absurdity
of his position, but it amuses him to defend it. The anti-
Semites “like to play with speech because by putting forth
ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their
interlocutor; they are enchanted with their unfairness be-
cause for them it is not a question of persuading by good
arguments but of intimidating or disorienting. If you insist
too much they close up, they point out with one superb
word that the time to argue has passed.” Thus if the anti-
Semite is impervious to reason and experience, it is not be-
cause his reasons are strong but because he has chosen to be
impervious. A reading of the superb short story by John

The Yellow Myth 265

Berryman to which I have already referred will show how
perfectly this analysis accounts for the damnable situation
in which Berryman once found himself when he engaged
in an argument with a member of the Christian Front. As
a matter of fact, Sartre’s analysis parallels very closely the
findings made by American social scientists who have
studied the personality of the anti-Semite. 2

Since the passion of the anti-Semite has not been pro-
voked from the outside, he is able to keep it well in hand,
letting himself go as much as he wants. He has chosen, in
other words, to be terrifying. Thus he controls the situa-
tion vis-a-vis the anti-anti-Semite. The disquieting picture
that he reads in the eyes of the nonprejudiced person dic-
tates his own strategy and tactics. “This external model
relieves him of the necessity of seeking his own personality
within himself; he has chosen to be all outside, never to
examine his conscience, never to be anything but the very
fear he strikes in others: he is running away from the inti-
mate awareness that he has of himself even more than from
Reason.”

/ Thus the anti-Semite is essentially a mediocre person, a
person well aware of his own mediocrity. “There is no ex-
ample,” writes Sartre, “of an anti-Semite claiming individual
superiority over the Jews.” The anti-Semite knows and
readily admits that he is a mediocre person; in fact, he
glories in his mediocrity and seeks out the kinship of other
mediocrities. “If he has become an anti-Semite, it is be-
cause one cannot be anti-Semitic alone” The statement “I
hate Jews,” writes Sartre — and how true it is! — is one that
is always said in chorus. By saying it, the anti-Semite con-
nects himself with a tradition and a community: that of the

2 66 A Mask for Privilege

mediocre man. Sensing his own mediocrity, the anti-Semite
seeks to take possession of some concrete aspect of his life
— his being 100 per cent American or native bom — as a
means of rationalizing his essential mediocrity and of in-
vesting it with importance.

The hatred of French for Germans, of Poles for Russians,
is not like the hatred of the anti-Semite for the Jew, for it
is not colored by sadism. “It is amusing,” writes Sartre, “to
be anti-Semitic.” It is notorious that the sadist persecutes
the weak and defenseless not merely because it is safer but
because it is somehow more pleasurable than to persecute
the strong. The Nazis did not immediately set about the
extermination of the Jews: they wanted to exterminate
them in a piecemeal fashion, to prolong the pleasure derived
from the process. Thus the confirmed anti-Semite is, in the
depths of his soul, a criminal. For the measures that he
advocates from time to time against the Jews are but the
preliminary steps to the final act of murder: they are
“symbolic murders.”

The latent anti-Semite is a somewhat different type. He
would not harm the Jews nor would he act to prevent
violence against them. The latent anti-Semites, in Sartre’s
analysis, “are nothing: they are no one.” To them anti-
Semitism is “an enormous affirmation” which must be
respectable because they have borrowed it from respectable
people. “It presents, too, a serious advantage for those
people who recognize their profound instability and who
are weary of it: it allows them to assume the appearance of
passion and ... to confuse passion with personality.”

While Sartre’s analysis of the anti-Semitic personality is
brilliant and shrewd, it is subject to one important qualifica-

The Yellow Myth 267

tion. It could be inferred from this analysis that individuals
are born into the world with the types of personality in
which prejudice serves a psychic function. Obviously this
is not the case; prejudice is overwhelmingly a product of
social conditioning. It is only in a sick society that certain
types of individuals feel the need to scapegoat; or, if not a
sick society, one in which the social side of man’s nature
cannot find adequate satisfactions. It is only in such a society
that prejudice can be said to have a personal and a social
function. The frustrations which are displaced, projected,
and rationalized, as outlined in an earlier chapter, are in-
duced by society, not by some irreducible core of sin,
hatred, or animus in human nature. It is debatable if a false
feeling of racial superiority brings any real satisfaction to
the individuals and groups that seem to crave this feeling
as a solace to their egos. But from a short-range point of
view, it is true that a few individuals profit from group
dominance and it is also true that in a society riddled with
social contradictions prejudice does have a f uiiction.

Here, then, is Sartre’s final portrait of the anti-Semite:

He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews of course, but of
himself, of his conscience, of freedom, of his instincts, of his
responsibilities, of solitude, of change, of society and the
world; of everything except the Jews. He is a coward who
does not want to admit his cowardice to himself; a murderer
who represses and censures his penchant for murder without
being able to kill except in effigy or in the anonymity of a
mob; a malcontent who dares not revolt for fear of the conse-
quences of his rebellion.) By adhering to anti-semitism, he is
not only adopting an opinion, he is choosing himself as a per-
son. He is choosing the permanence and impenetrability of
rock, the total irresponsibility of the warrior who obeys his

268 A Mask for Privilege

leaders — and he has no leader. He chooses to acquire nothing,
to deserve nothing but that everything be given him as his
birthright — and he is not noble. He chooses finally, that good
be ready made, not in question, out of reach; he dare not look
at it for fear of being forced to contest it and seek another
form of it. The Jew is only a pretext; elsewhere it will be the
Negro, the yellow race. The Jew’s insistence simply allows
the anti-semite to nip his anxieties in the bud by persuading
himself that his place has always been cut out in the world,
that it was waiting for him and that by virtue of tradition he
has the right to occupy it. Anti-semitism , in a word, is fear of
maris fate. The anti-semite is the man who wants to be pitiless
stone, furious torrent, devastating lightning: in short, every-
thing but a man.

This is the type of personality to which the professional
anti-Semite addresses his strictures of hate and envy; this
is the underlying predisposition upon which he builds his
structures of blind fury. Anti-Semitism is a fear of one’s
self — the sweat of fear, the fever of inadequacy — that, in
moments of crisis, breeds havoc and social panic. As a
weapon in social conflicts, anti-Semitism is a menacing
reality; as a deep-seated psychological fear of one’s self, it
is likewise an incontestable reality; but anti-Semitism as a
doctrine, as an ideology, is a scurrilous yellow myth, a
swamp fever exhaled by sick people in a sick society.

This yellow myth must be dispelled. If men will think,
they can ferret out the real evils of this world; and if they
will act, they can correct these evils. But the yellow myth
that obscures their personal inadequacies also blinds them
to the inadequacies of the world in which they live. For
it is a myth with a hidden meaning, a perverse reflection of
reality. This hidden meaning is revealed in the history of

The Yellow Myth 269

the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The book which the
forgers of the Protocols pirated was a fantasy written by
Maurice Joly as a means of satirizing and exposing the dic-
tatorial regime of Napoleon III. It might best be described
as a vivid and imaginative foreshadowing of fascism, a kind
of blueprint for the fascist conspiracy. By picturing this
conspiracy as a Jewish conspiracy, the Czarist agents who
committed the forgery succeeded in creating one of the
most persistent and dangerous myths of all time. For subse-
quent world happenings seemed to confirm the prophecy
of the Protocols; in fact, the delusion was almost perfect.

What more clever stratagem could be imagined than for
a man, bent on committing a crime, to project his criminal
intention on an innocent victim by charging the victim
with having organized a conspiracy which is, in fact, his
own? Then, while the circumstantial evidence mounts
against the victim, the real criminal commits his crime in
full view of a public whose attention is so riveted upon the
scapegoat that it does not even see that a dagger is being
driven in its back. Those who charge the Jews with a con-
spiracy to dominate the world are themselves the real con-
spirators and their conspiracy is the reality hidden in the
fable.

f Anti-Semitism is one of the greatest barriers to self-
knowledge and social understanding of our times because it
masks a reality Jf- the reality of social, economic, and politi-
cal injustice. fThe Jew in the Thorn,” a folk tale which
dates from 1500 a.d., tells of a manservant who, having been
swindled out of his wages, feels absolutely justified in steal-
ing the money from a Jew. The fact that he has been robbed
is the meaning hidden in the yellow myth of anti-Semitism.

270 A Mask for Privilege

When men come to understand this meaning, they will
recognize that anti-Semitism is a universal injustice, born
of injustice, fostering injustice, kept alive by injustice.
Man’s ability to live in peace with his fellow men, his ca-
pacity to see justice done, his humanity, all can be measured
by his freedom, as an individual and as a member of society,
from the blinding effects of this ancient yellow myth.

Since this chapter began with a parable, perhaps it can
close on another. Milton Hindus, substituting quotation
marks for James Joyce’s system of dashes and indentations,
has provided a fine parable from Ulysses . The dialogue is
between Mr. Deasy, the anti-Semite, and Stephen Dedalus:

“Mark my words, Mr. Dedalus,” [Deasy] said, “England is
in the hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance,
her press. And they are the signs of a nation’s decay. Wherever
they gather they eat up the nation’s vital strength. I have seen
it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew
merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old Eng-
land is dying. . .

“A merchant,” Stephen said, “is one who buys cheap and
sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not?”

“They sinned against the light,” Mr. Deasy said gravely.
“And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why
they are wanderers on the earth to this day. . .

“Who has not?” Stephen said.

“What do you mean?” Mr. Deasy asked. . . .

“History,” Stephen said, “is a nightmare from which I am
trying to awaken.”

Notes

CHAPTER X

1. See Jewish Encyclopedia , Vol. XI, p. 169, where it is referred
to as “the first incident of this kind that occurred in the United
States”; and also the comments of Dr. Joshua Bloch, the Protestant ,
November 1943, p. 16, where it is described as “the beginnings of
this obnoxious and alas now widespread form of social prejudice.”

2. See Organizing American Jewry by Bernard G. Richards,
pp. 12-13.

3. See comments of George William Curtis, Harper’s , July 1877,
p. 300.

4. The Politicos , 1939.

5. The Wild Seventies, 1941.

6. The New Nation by Frederic L. Paxson, 1927, p. 72.

7. The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, Vol. Ill,
p. 48.

8. Jews and Judaism, 1906.

9. Anti-Semitism by Bernard Lazare, 1903, pp. 352, 355, 362.

10. The Jews, 1922, pp. 201-203.

11. The American Rich is not the only book in which Hoffman
Nickerson has given expression to what might be called a kind of
medieval anti-Semitism. See Arms and Policy (1945); and The
New Slavery (1947).

CHAPTER IX

1. See the American Magazine for December 1914.

2. Harper's Weekly, November 13, 1915.

3. The Conquering Jew, 1916.

4. The Rise of the Jew in the Western World by Uriah Zevi
Engelman, 1944, p. 118.

5. Foreign Influences in A?nerican Life, 1944, p. 95.

Notes

272

6. American Journal of Sociology , January 1939.

7. Foreign Influences in American Life , p. 50.

8. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel by C. Vann Woodward, 1938.

9. See The Tragedy of Henry Ford by Jonathan Leonard, 1932,

p. 208.

10. See Anti-Semitism in the United States by Lee J. Levinger,
1925, p. 9; and Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. II, p. 119.

11. See Jews in the Contemporary World by Abram Leon
Sachar, 1939, where the effect of the act upon American Jewish
life is discussed in detail.

12. “The Jewish Problem,” Century, 1921.

13. Nation , June 22, 1921.

14. See the articles by Norman Hapgood in Harper's Weekly ,
January 15, 22, and 29, 1916.

15. Nation, November 14, 1923, and February 13, 1924.

16. New York Times, December 16, 1937.

17. The Jews Come to America, 1932.

18. Harper's, November 1933.

19. Common Ground, 1938.

20. Vol. 37, p. 155.

21. Anti-Semitism: Yesterday and Tomorrow, 1936, p. 141.

22. Jews in a Gentile World, 1942, p. 111.

23. See It's a Secret by Henry Hoke, 1946, Chaps. IV and V.

24. On the subject of Mr. Rankin’s attitude to the Jews, see
Congressional Record , April 24, 1941, p. 327960; June 4, 1941,
p. 4726; March 29, 1943, p. A-1585; April 24, 1941, p. 327980;
April 7, 1943, p. A-1817; December 18, 1943, p. 10999; January 26,
1944, pp.* A-446 and A-447.

25. See The Home Front, published by the American Jewish
Committee, March 15, 1947; and the report of the Anti-Defamation
League, New York Times , May 7, 1947, and PM for the same date.

CHAPTER III

1. Nation, March 21, 1923.

2. The Jewish Problem in the Modern World by James Parkes,
1946.

3. Vol. 54, p. 421.

4. See Race: A History of Modern Ethnic Theories by Louis L.
Snyder, 1939, p. 230.

Notes

273

5. Atlantic Monthly, December 1908.

6. Race and National Solidarity , 1923.

7. See Literary Digest, September 13, 1913, p. 428.

8. See also The New Barbarians by the famous historian Dr.
Wilbur C. Abbott, 1925.

9. Up Stream; An American Chronicle, 1922.

10. The Education of Henry Adams , p. 344.

11. The Jew in Our Day, 1944.

CHAPTER IV

1. Jews in a Gentile World, p. 156; emphasis mine.

2. Jewish Experiences in America, 1930, p. 148.

3. Political Science Quarterly, Spring 1942.

4. Anti-Semitism : A Social Disease , 1946, p. 12.

5. Jewish Encyclopedia, 1925, the article on “Anti-Semitism” by
Gotthard Deutsch.

6. See the Home Front , March 14, 1947.

7. Jews in a Gentile World, p. 157.

8. Anti-Semitism: A Social Disease, 1946, pp. 96-125.

9. Journal of Psychology, 1944, Vol. 17, pp. 339-370.

10. See, in particular, The Rise of the Jew in the Western
World , 1944, by Uriah Zevi Engelman.

CHAPTER V

1. From the article on “Clubs” by Dr. Crane Brinton, Encyclo-
pedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, p. 576.

, 2. Civilization and Group Relationships, 1945, p. 96.

3. How Odd of God, 1934, p. 116.

4. See A Social and Religious History of the Jews, by S. W.
Baron, 1937, p. 285; and Anti-Semitism: A Social Disease , 1946, p. 5.

5. Public Opinion Quarterly, Spring 1942, p. 48.

6. Kenyon Review, Autumn 1945.

7. Menorah Journal, Spring 1946, p. 139.

8. All in the Name of God , 1934.

9. See, for example, my article comparing the pattern of dis-
crimination in Minneapolis with that in the twin city of St. Paul.
Common Ground, Autumn 1946.

10. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants , by Silcox and Fisher, 1934.

Notes

2 74

11. See Where Hope Lies, by Leo Schwarz, 1940, pp. 31-33, for
General Moseley’s views on anti-Semitism.

12. Nation, February 28, 1923, emphasis mine.

13. See “Jewish Teachers” by Samuel Tennenbaum, Jewish Ex-
periences in America, 1930, pp. 75-80.

14. Who Shall Be Educated? 1944, by Warner, Havighurst, and
Loeb, p. 60.

15. See PM, August 8 and 28, 1945, and the New Republic of
August 20, 1945.

16. New York Post, August 7, 1945.

17. See the report of Dr. Frank Kingdon, placed in the Con-
gressional Record, October 18, 1945; “College Quotas and Ameri-
can Democracy’’ by Dan W. Dodson, the American Scholar ,
Summer 1945.

18. American Mercury, July 1946.

19. New York Times, January 23, 1946.

20. PM, February 21, 1946, p. 13.

21. See PM, October 23, 1946, New York Times, October 23,
1946. Nineteen of 23 nonsectarian colleges in New York State ask
applicants about their race or religion or national background —
New York Times, March 8, 1947.

22. Congress Weekly, November 22, 1946.

23. See Quotas, a pamphlet published by Dr. Harry Cimring,
Los Angeles, 1946.

24. New York Post , November 22, 1946.

CHAPTER VI

1. See the article by David Riesman, Public Opinion Quarterly,
Spring 1942, p. 41.

2. Jews in a Gentile World, p. 396.

3. The American Jew , 1942, p. 161.

4. See Jews in a Gentile World, p. 409.

5. The Social System of Ethnic Groups, 1945, p. 203.

6. Jewish Experiences in America, p. 121.

7. Jewish Frontier Anthology, 1945, p. 220.

8. Jews on Approval, 1932.

9. Congress Weekly, December 27, 1946, p. 8.

10. See PM, September 23, 1946.

Notes

2 7S

11. New York Times , May 8, 1946.

12. See, for example, “Whittling Away Religious Freedom” by
Milton R. Konvitz, Commentary , June 1946.

13. Christian Century , June 9, 1937.

CHAPTER VII

1. Anti-Semitism: A Social Disease , p. 9.

2. See Essays on Anti-Se?nitism, 1946, p. 146.

3. Political Science Quarterly , March 1919.

4. Jews in a Gentile World, p. 388.

5. Jews on Approval, pp. 217-218; emphasis added.

6. See “Minority Caricatures on the American ^Stage” by Dr.
Harold E. Adams in Studies in the Science of Society, 1937.

7. See the Nation, April 17, 1935, and October 10, 1935; also the
New Masses, April 23, 1935.

8. See “This Is the Man” in Now with His Love, 1933, p. 36.

9. See “Of Jews and Thomas Wolfe” by Harold U. Ribalow,
Congress Weekly, January 24, 1947.

10. See “F. Scott Fitzgerald and Literary Anti-Semitism” by
Milton Hindus, Commentary, June 1947, pp. 508-516.

11. See two articles by Albert Jay Nock which appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly for June and July, 1941; and an article by Ernest
Boyd in Scribner's for October 1933.

12. For an interesting and penetrating discussion of “marginal,
trading peoples” see the section entitled “The Stimulus of Penaliza-
tions” in A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee, 1947, pp. 125-
139.

CHAPTER VIII

1. Anti-Semitism: A Social Disease, p. 131.

2. For other studies of fascist propaganda techniques, see The
Fine Art of Propaganda by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth
Briant Lee, 1939, an excellent study of the fancy techniques of
Father Coughlin; and also Conquering the Man in the Street, 1940,
by Ellis Freeman, a brilliant analysis of fascist propaganda and of
the cultural factors which make for its acceptance.

3. Organized Anti-Semitism in America , 1941, Chapter XIV.

4. Anti-Semitism: A Social Disease , p. 13.

Notes

27 6

5. See Strong, op, cit ,, pp. 97-98.

6. Organized Antisemitism in America by Dr. Donald S. Strong,
American Council on Public Affairs, 1941, p. 176.

7. Conquering the Man in the Street , 1940, p. 319.

8. See the series of articles by Tom O’Connor in PM for May,
June, and July, 1945.

9. For background on Bader, see The Plotters by John Roy
Carlson, 1946, pp. 145-146.

10. For further details on the meeting, see Pittsburgh Press ,
March 6, 1946.

11. Pittsburgh Press , March 7, 1946.

12. New York Times , October 10, 1946.

13. Journal of Social Psychology , Vol. VII, pp. 309-319.

14. Commentary , March 1947, p. 284.

CHAPTER IX

1. New York Times , December 1, 1946.

2. New York Post , December 13, 1946.

3. New York Times, November 5, 1946.

4. See the issue of November 3, 1946.

5. New York Post, December 12, 1946.

6. New York Herald Tribune, December 11, 1946.

7. A picture of the child appeared in the National Jewish
Monthly i a publication of the B’nai B’rith organization, in the issue
for October 1946.

8. New York Post, November 22, 1946.

9. Atlanta Constitution, November 3, 1946.

10. PM, December 13, 1946; emphasis added.

11. On July 1, 1947, the acting director of the Anti-Defamation
League announced that Loomis, on bond pending an appeal of his
conviction, was organizing a new “hate” group.

CHAPTER X

1. Quoted in Anti-Semitism: A Social Diseased, p. 45.

2. From a speech before the Institute of Ethnic Affairs, Wash-
ington, May 29, 1946; emphasis added.

3. For one of numerous proposals made to the commission, see
Civil Liberties News, Chicago, July 11, 1947, Vol. 3, No. 28, based

Notes

277

upon the proceedings of the first International Consultative Con-
ference on Human Rights held in London, June 13-16, 1947.

4. New York Times , June 29, 1947.

5. PM, April 3, 1947, p. 4.

6. The American Jew, 1942, p. 179.

7. “Race and Religion in Selective Admission,” Journal of the
American Association of Collegiate Registrars .

8. See statement of the Catholic Welfare Committee, New York
Times, February 27, 1947.

9. See Journal of Social Issues, August 1945.

10. Jews on Approval, 1932, pp. 214-215.

11. Commentary , March 1947, p. 284.

12. See also the comments of Cabell Phillips in the New York
Times of February 16, 1947.

13. Democracy and Defamation, 1942.

14. New Republic , October 29, 1945.

15. A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem , 1945.

16. Civil Liberties News, May 23, 1947.

17. Conquering the Man in the Street, p. 326.

18. Martin Gumpert in the Nation, May 12, 1945.

19. Commentary , November 1946, p. 464.

CHAPTER XI

1. Partisan Review, Spring 1946, p. 163.

2. Commentary , March 1947, p. 284.

Acknowledgments

For helpful comments, criticisms, and suggestions I wish
to thank Dr. Bruno Lasker; Mr. Will Maslow and Mr.
Henry Silberman of the American Jewish Congress; Mr.
Hyman Edelman; Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Aidlin; and Dr.
Frederick Pollock of the Institute of Social Research, who
made available certain manuscript material, including a
paper by Dr. Paul Massing which is referred to in Chap-
ter IV. For assistance in preparation of the manuscript, I am
indebted to Margaret O’Connor and Ross B. Wills.

Portions of the manuscript appeared in article form in
Common Ground, Jewish Life, and Cotmnentary and I am
indebted to the editors of these publications for assignments
of rights.

I also wish to acknowledge a deep indebtedness in the
preparation of this and other books to Mrs. Thelma Jack-
man of the Sociology Department of the Los Angeles
Public Library and to her always courteous and most help-
ful assistants: Adalea Haass, Dorothy Smith, Mary Beth
Otis, and Anne Mueller.

My thanks, also, to the editors of Partisan Review for
permission to quote from Jean-Paul Sartre’s article “Por-
trait of the Antisemite” which appeared in the Spring 1946
issue of that publication; to The Viking Press, Inc., for per-
mission to quote from The Theory of the Leisure Class by
Thorstein Veblen; to Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.,

280 Acknowledgments

for permission to quote from The Beginnings of Critical
Realism in America by Vernon Louis Parrington; to Ran-
dom House, Inc., for permission to quote from The Sound
and the Fury by William Faulkner; to Houghton Mifflin
Company for permission to quote from John Jay Chapman
and His Letters, edited by M. A. DeWolfe Howe, from
The Letters of Henry Adams, edited by Worthington
Chauncey Ford, and from The Education of Henry Adams
by Henry Adams; to The Macmillan Company for permis-
sion to quote from Jews in a Gentile World by Graeber
and Britt (Copyright, 1942, by The Macmillan Company
and used with their permission) ; to Oxford University Press
for permission to quote from The Jewish Problem in the
Modern World by James Parkes (Copyright 1946 by Ox-
ford University Press, New York, Inc.) ; to Liveright Pub-
lishing Corporation, New York, for permission to quote
from Jews on Approval by Maurice Samuel, and to Roy
Publishers for permission to quote from “ Stepchildren of
France by Charles Odic.

Index

Index

Adams, Henry, 75-77, 181; quoted,
18, 70

Adams, Herbert Baxter, 67
Adler, Cyrus, quoted, 52
Adorno, Dr. T. W., quoted, 185,
186, 187

Advertising, position and influence
of Jews in, 146

Agriculture, position and influence
of Jews in, 144, 152
Ahlwardt, 98

Alexander II, Czar, assassination an
excuse for expelling Jews, 25
Altman, Benjamin, 61
America First Committee, 194-196,
198, 199

American Action, Inc., 195-200,
202, 203

American Association of Dental
Schools, 139

American Federation of Labor, 218
American Forward Movement, 192
American Foundation, 197
American Israelites, 3
American Jewish Congress, 253;
Law and Social Action Commis-
sion of, 241

American Legion, 198
American National Action Party,
196

American National Democratic
Committee, 199

American Nationalist Confedera-
tion, 192

American Protective Association
(A.PA.), 28, 81

American Vigilant Intelligence
Federation, 190

Amusements, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 146, 148
Anglo-Saxons, apotheosis of, 69
Anti-Defamation League, 24
Anti-defamation work, evaluated,
260

Anti-Semites, latent type of, 266;
personality types of, 262; psy-
chological analysis of, 263-269;
sadism of, 266; subordination of
reason by, 264; symbolic murder
concept of, 266. See also Anti-
Semitism; Crackpots
Anti-Semitism, absence of, in
American political institutions,
51-52; American and European,
compared, 48; antisocial uses of,
88, 106-107; as escape from re-
ality, 109; as rationalization of
undemocratic social order, 50; as
social disease, 105-112, 267-268;
as symbol of fascist groups, 42; as
symptom of social change, 107-
109; as universal social injustice,
269-270; as yellow myth, 268-
270; based on alleged resistance
to democratic process, 160; char-
acter of, defined by social con-
text of use, 89; Christian influ-
ences as factor, 49; combating
of, through education, 241-247;
through governmental protec-
tion, 251-255; through individual'
action, 241-247; compared with
other group prejudices, 174; con-
flicting traditional background
of, 49-50; correlated with fear of
social change, 103; anti-demo-

Index

284

cratic nature of, 94; countertra-
dition sanctioning, 70, 80-81; de-
velopment of, reviewed, 47-48;
dislike of foreigners as factor, 49,
107; dislike of the unlike as fac-
tor, 90-91, 93, 107; distribution
of, in Fortune polls, 103; in so-
cial science studies, 104; eco-
nomic basis of, in United States,
146-148, 154-158; economic form
of, 41, 44; emancipation as fac-
tor in, 93-97; eradication of, 223—
224; etymology of, discussed, 89-
94; first overt manifestation of, 3;
in American upper classes, 103—
104; in armed forces, 125-126; in
colleges and universities ( q.v .),
126-141; in European countries,
25-26; in Germany, 16, 27, 30, 39,
90, 91-92, 95, 97-102, 104-105,
118-119, 123, 188-189; in litera-
ture, 181-182; ideology of, 88, 90;
indefinable meaning of term, 89;
individual predisposition to, 262-
269; industrial revolution as
ground of, 94-102; intentional in-
consistency of, 92; justifying
myths confused with objects of
hatred, 90; modern capitalism as
indirect source of, 94-102; mod-
em form, basic aspects of, 93-94;
most pronounced at middle-class
level, 134; myth-making in sup-
port of, 56-68; not explained by
scapegoat factors, 87; official and
unofficial American attitudes
toward, compared, 55-56; op-
posed by classical tradition, 50-
56; opposition to, reconcilable
with discrimination, 91-92; ori-
gin and connotations of term, 88-
89; outlawing of, 250-251; pat-
tern and mythical character of,
revealed by economic position
of Jews, 142; political form,
growth of, 42-44, 47; post-First
World War movement, an-
alyzed, 36-37, 41; present status

of, 46-48, 103-104; prior to 1877,
3-4; rationalization of Jews as
aliens, 105, 107; rationalized by
racist theory, 59; role of, in ide-
ology of reaction, 102-103; sanc-
tioned by modern tradition, 49;
social and cultural destructive-
ness of, 108; social genesis of,
107-108, 225; social skills of Jews
as factor, 171-172, 176-177; spe-
cial relation of, to social crisis,
179-180; stereotype as clue to,
162, 182; upsurge of, in 1910—
1916, 23-24; uses of, as ideological
weapon, 92-107. See also Anti-
Semites; Crackpots; Discrimina-
tion; Exclusion; Jewish stereo-
type; Myths
Arizona, 17
Armenians, 164
Armour, 18

Amall, Governor Ellis, 218, 221,
253; quoted, 217-218
Assimilation, as source of antipathy,
94; subjective effect of, 84-86;
viewed as apostasy, 84-86
Association of Medical Colleges,
discusses Jewish quotas, 39
Assyrians, 236

Atlanta Putsch, 207-222; back-
ground of, 211-215; denouement
of, 216-220; significance of, 221-
222. See also Columbians, Inc.
Atomic Energy Commission,
United States, 246
Austin (Texas), Jewish exclusion
from subdivisions of, 236
Austria, anti-Semitism in, 25; Jew-
ish persecution in, opposed by
United States, 53

Automobile industry, position and
influence of Jews in, 144
Aviation, position and influence of
Jews in, 144

Bader, Salem, 196

Baker, Max, quoted, 40

Baker, Ray Stannard, quoted, 23

Index

Banks, limitations on Jews imposed
by, 48; position and influence of
Jews in, 143

Bar associations, quota system con-
sidered by, 133

Barnard College, anti-Jewish dis-
crimination in, 136
Baron, S. W., quoted, 89
Baruch, Bernard, 61
Beard, Charles, quoted, 8, 9, 14,
18

Beard, Miriam, quoted, 150
Beecher, Henry Ward, 4-6, 79
Beecher, Lyman, 79
Beilis, Mendel, “ritual murder” trial
of, 30-32

Belloc, Hilaire, quoted, 21
Berryman, John, 265; quoted, 120,
127

Bilbo, Senator, 195; quoted, 246
Bishop, John Peale, 181
Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold,
on racial anti-Semitism, 97, 99,
100

Bloom, Solomon F., quoted, 25
Boas, Ralph Philip, quoted, 84, 114
Books. See Publications
Boot and shoe industry, position
and influence of Jews in, 145
Boss system, in 1870’s, 9-10
Boston, Irish stereotype in, 163
Boudin, Louis, quoted, 176
Bowen, Croswell, quoted, 209-210
Boyesen, Hjalmar, quoted, 13
Bradley, Mrs. Willie, beating of,
78

Bradley-Martins, 150
Brandeis, Justice Louis, 246
Britt, George, 133
Broun, Heywood, 133; quoted, 39,
126-127, 130, 131, 252
Brown, Dr. J. F., quoted, 83
Browne, Lewis, quoted, 118
Bryant, William Cullen, 4
Bryn Mawr College, anti-Jewish
discrimination in, 136
Bullitt, William, 246
Burgess, John W., 67

285

Burke, Emory, 207-208, 212, 217-
219; quoted, 218, 219
Business enterprise, triumph of, in
“second Revolution,” 8-9

California, stereotype of Okies
and Arkies in, 163-164
Capitalism, as influence on anti-
Semitism, 94-102; development
of, related to status of Jews, 149-
150, 156, 158

Cardozo, Justice Benjamin, 61
Carlson, John Roy, 184
Carnegie, Andrew, 18
Carpenter, Dr. Niles, quoted, 108
Cartels and monopolies, rise of, as
affecting status of Jews, 149
Cather, Willa, 181
Cattell, J. McKeen, 24
Central Conference of American
Rabbis, 235

Chain-store systems, position and
influence of Jews in, 145
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 58
Chambers of Commerce, anti-Jew-
ish discrimination by, 38
Chaplins ky v. New Hampshire, 255
Chapman, John Jay, 75-76; quoted,
73-74

Chapultepec, Act of, 231
Chemical industry, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 144
Chickering Hall (New York),
anti-persecution mass meeting in,
54

Childs, Marquis, quoted, 246
Chinese, 12, 15-16, 164
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 16,
* 21

Chris tenberry, Robert, 199
Christian Front, 43, 201, 202
Christian Mobilizers, 43
Christian Socialists in Germany,
anti-Semitism of, 97
Church League of America, 197
Citizens U.SA. Committee, 196
Civil liberties, laissez-faire attitude
toward, 251, 254

286

Index

Civil rights, federal support of, 229-
231. See also Functional equality
Civil Rights Act, 15
Cleveland, Grover, 53
Clinchy, Dr. Everett R., quoted,
123

Close, Upton, 197, 200; quoted, 201
Clothing industry, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 145
Clubs, exclusion practices of, 48,
114-125. See alsa Exclusion
Coal industry, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 144
Coatesville (Pa.) lynching, 73-74
Colgate College, anti-Jewish dis-
crimination in, 136
College of Physicians and Sur-
geons, Columbia University, anti-
Jewish discrimination at, 135
College of the City of New York,
discrimination against Jewish stu-
dents at, 3

Colleges and universities, anti-Jew-
ish discrimination at, 39, 40, 46,
48, 126-141. See also Quota sys-
tem

Colonial Jewish disabilities, 52
Columbia University, 24; anti-Jew-
ish discrimination at, 39, 135
Columbians, Inc., background of,
211-215; charges against, 218-219;
leaders of, 207-211; personality
types of, 219-220; purposes of,
207, 212, 215, 219, 221; Nazi tech-
niques of, 212-213; organization
and timetable of, 212; suit against,
218. See also Atlanta Putsch
Commerce and trade, position and
influence of Jews in, 151-152, 157
Commission on Human Rights,
United Nations, 227
Committee for Constitutional Gov-
ernment, 197

Communism, charged in anti-
Semitic propaganda, 41, 100
Communists, Jews identified with,
100

Congress (U.S.), 15, 16, 101, 246

Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions (CIO), 218

Conley, Jim, witness in Frank mur-
der trial, 31
Conrad, Joseph, 86
Constitution (U.S.), anti-Jewish
amendment defeated, 3
Construction industry, position and
influence of Jews in, 145
Cooke, 18

Cooley, Charles Horton, quoted,
115, 119, 129

Coolidge, Dr. Albert Sprague,
quoted, 138

Coughlin, Father Charles, 44, 121,

184, 199, 253

Coughlin-Lemke third party, 42,
44

Coughlinite anti-Semites, 193
Coughlinite Catholics, Jew-baiting
by, 83

Council on Dental Education, 139
Countertradition in United States,
sanctioning anti-Semitism, 80-81,
84; Jews as residual legatees of,
81-87

Crackpots, 184-206; activities of,
200 if. ; America First movement,
194-195; American Action move-
ment, 195-200; armchair anti-
Semites, 191-195; behind-the-
scenes support of, 190; efforts at
confederation, 192-195; fascism
of, 188, 204—206; industrial groups
attracted by, 203; propaganda of,

185, 187-188; ritualism of, 186;
sappers, 185-191

Creigh, Thomas N., 197
Croatians, 69

Culture conflicts, as rationalization
of economic and social, 30

Dairy farming, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 144
Damascus, ritual murder case of
1840, 53

Dartmouth College, 68; quota sys-
tem at, 134-136

Index

Davenport, Charles B., 64
Dearborn Independent, anti-Semitic
campaign of, 33-35; murder
charges by, in Rosenbluth case,
35. See also Ford, Henry-
Deatherage, George B., 192
Defamation, organized and disor-
ganized, distinguished, 251-253
Democratic forces, program for
union of, 228-229

Dental schools, quota system in,
138-139

Department of Justice, Civil Rights
Division proposed for, 260
Department stores, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 145
Detachment from Gentile culture,
effects of, 172-173
Deutsch, Albert, quoted, 219-220,
222

Deutsch, Dr. Monroe E., quoted,
121-122

Diaspora, indirectly related to anti-
Semitism, 87

Dickey, Dr. John S., 134
Discrimination, anti- Jewish, as form
of competitive impulse, 113; as
involving alteration in competi-
tive power, 121; as organized
policy, 124-125; by employers,
158-159; elimination of, 223 ff.;
group pattern of, 113-114, 124 —
125; in employment, 237; in Eu-
rope and United States, com-
pared, 118-119; in insurance busi-
ness, 158; in office and clerical
work, 158; in private utilities, 158;
minimized by upper-class Jewish
leaders, 114; by Gentiles, 115;
overt nature of, 113; social form
of, leading to economic and po-
litical, 120. See also Anti-
Semitism; Exclusion; Functional
equality

Dislike of the unlike, as factor in
anti-Semitism, 90-91, 93, 107
Disraeli, Benjamin, 119
Dodd, William E., 5

287

Dodson, Dan W., quoted, 136
Dorsey, George, murder of, 257
Dorsey, Willie Mae, murder of,
257

Drachman, Bernard, quoted, 52
Drachsler, Julius, quoted, 80
Dreiser, Theodore, 181
Duke, Dan, 221
Duke University, 198
Du Pont, Lammot, 202
Durkheim, £mile, quoted, 183

Eakins, Thomas, 11
East European Jews, 62-63; atti-
tude of German Jews toward, 27,
30; concentration of, in needle
trades, 27; contrasted with Ger-
man Jews, 27, 30; delayed Amer-
ican reaction to, 28-29; discrim-
ination against, 28-30; immigra-
tion of, 24-26

Economic position, as cause of
Jewish persecution, 83
Economic pressures, accentuation
of religious differences by, 159-
161

Edgerton, John E., quoted, 67-68
Education, against bogus counter-
tradition, 245-246; as means of
combating anti-Semitism and ra-
cism, 241-247; changing of group
attitudes through, 246-247;
“tolerance propaganda,” 243-244;
weakness of programs, 242-243
Eliot, George, quoted, 161
Eliot, T. S., 181
Ellison, Ralph, quoted, 17-18
Emancipation, Jewish; as factor in
anti-Semitism, 93-97; in Europe
and America, compared, 50
Emden, Paul H., quoted, 174-175
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 11, 72, 77
Emerson School (Boston) , anti-
Jewish discrimination in, 136
Emery, De Witt, 196
Employers, anti-jewish discrimina-
tion by, 37, 46, 158-159, 237

288

Index

“Escape into anonymity,” 237

Eugenics, as anti-Semitic doctrine,
65-66

European Jews, 54. See also East
European Jews

Exclusion of Jews, as means of
consolidating social power, 116-
118; from city subdivisions, 236;
from industry and finance, 146-
147; in America and Europe,
compared, 118-119; in colleges
and universities, 126-141; influ-
ence of “prestige” organizations,
115-118, 124; initiated at top so-
cial levels, 124; intensification of
prejudice by, 121-122; of other
white ethnic groups, compared,
121; pattern of, in United States,
122-124; planned to augment
power, 124; rationalized as free-
dom of association, 115; recent
extension of, 125; relation of, to
personal and civic rights, 231-
232; system of, 113-141; time of
development in various commu-
nities, 123; timing of policies,
124. See also Clubs; Hotels,
etc.; Discrimination, anti-Jew-
ish; Quota system

Fair employment practices, inter-
est of Jews in, 237-238

Fascism, 70, 88, 188, 194, 203-207,
245, 257, 269; anti-Semitism and,
103; combating of, 256-260; edu-
cation against, 242-245; example
of American, 207-222; in United
States, 205-206, 210-211; noisy
vs. silent treatment of, 258; of
crackpots, 188, 204-206; thrives
on social bewilderment, 243; uni-
versal menace of, 257. See also
Atlanta Putsch; Columbians,
Inc.; Fascists

Fascists, 42, 83-84, 205, 210, 212,
213, 250, 251, 258. See also Fas-
cism

Faulkner, William, quoted, 179-180

Federal Bureau of Investigation,
221

Federal Communications Commis-
sion, 253

Fenichel, Dr. Otto, quoted, 90, 179
Finance, position and influence of
Jews in, 143. See also Industry
and finance

Fineberg, Dr., quoted, 258
Finns, 69

Fitzgerald, Scott, 181
Flynn, John T., 196, 200, 201;
quoted, 202-203

Food industry, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 144, 145
Ford, Henry, 119, 151, 191; anti-
Semitic campaign of, 33-35, 132;
quoted, 37

Fourteenth Amendment, 233, 255 -
256; protection of minorities un-
der, 14-15

Franco, Generalissimo, 201
Frank, Leo, murder trial and lynch-
ing of, 31-32; likened to Beilis
“ritual murder” trial, 32
Frank, Waldo, quoted, 77-78, 156-
157

Frankfurter, Justice Felix, 45
Franklin, Benjamin, fake letter on
Jews, 42

Franks, Maurice R., 196
Fraser, John Foster, quoted, 24
Fraternities and sororities, exclu-
sionist practices of, 126-132. See
also Colleges and universities
Freeman, Dr. Ellis, 255; quoted, 91,
194, 204, 243
French Canadians, 170
Frenkel -Brunswik, quoted, 104
Friends of Democracy, 199, 201
Fritsch, Theodor, 102
Frustration, as breeder of aggres-
sion, 80; as cause of group preju-
dice, 224-225; as factor in stereo-
typing, 169; displacement and
misdirection of, 80; need for de-
fining, 242; social conditioning
of, 267

Index

Functional equality, 226-236; code
for, proposed to United Nations,
227; dynamics for program of,
231; independent of “right to be
different,” 235-236; Jewish stake
in achievement of, 236; means of
obtaining, 229-231; need of, 226-
229

Furniture industry, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 145

Gannett, Lewis S., quoted, 49
Gaskell, Charles Milnes, 75
General merchandising, position
and influence of Jews in, 145
German- American Bund, 184
German Jews, 61, 63; attitude of
American rich toward, 20-21; at-
titude of, toward East European
Jews, 27, 30; capacity for assimi-
lation, 20; contrasted with East
European Jews, 27, 30; discrimi-
nation against, 19-22; immigra-
tion of, 18, 19; oppose immigra-
tion of East European Jews, 26;
rise of tycoons, 19
Germans, 69

Germany, anti-Semitism in, 16, 27,
30, 39, 90, 91-92, 95, 97-102, 104—
105, 118-119, 123, 188-189; Polish
stereotype in, 163

Gibbons, Henry Adams, quoted, 37
Gibbs, Josiah W., 11
Gillis, Adolph, quoted, 72
Ginsburg, David, 45
Gipson, James H., 198
Gipsy Club (Huntington, W. Va.),
as prestige organization, 123-124
Godkin, Edwin L., on industrial
revolution, 9, 10-11
Goldberg, Maxwell H., quoted, 138
Gottheil, Dr. Richard, 23
Gould, Jay, 18
Grace, Eugene, 119
Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga
Springs. See Seligman, Joseph
Grant, Madison, 164, 169; as myth-

289

maker, 57-60, 63, 66; quoted, 165—
166

Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., 3, 5
Gray, Col. Edward D., 198, 202
Great Britain, 103; exclusion of
Jews from, 26; social prestige of
Jews in, compared with United
States, 119

Great Myth. See Myths, anti-Semi-
tic

Greeks, 164, 236

Group differences, aggravated by
economic pressures, 159
Group libel statutes, against defa-
mation, evaluated, 256
Group tensions, inquiry into, 226

Ham, Tom, 215

Hamlin, Talbot, on new million-
aires, 10

Hammond, Ogden H., 201
Handlin, Oscar, quoted, 12, 28
Hapgood, Norman, quoted, 23,
Harlan, Justice John M., quoted,
15, 227 '

Harriman, Edward H., 18
Harrison, Benjamin, 53
Harriss, Robert M., 199, 202
Hart, Merwin K., 196, 197; quoted,
205

Hartz, W. Homer, 199
Harvard College, Jewish quota ad-
vocated at, 38-39, 132; reproduc-
tion study of graduates, 64
Hawaii, 17

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 11
Hay, John, quoted, 53
Hayes, Capt. Edward A., 198
Heavy industries, development of,
as affecting status of Jews, 149-
151; position and influence of
Jews in, 144; reactionary nature
of, as affecting non-Jewish bour-
geois liberalism, 150-151
Heine, Heinrich, 72
Hendrick, Burton J., 66; as myth-
maker, 57, 60-63
Herrick, Robert, 181

Index

290

Hill, James J., 18, 69
Hillman, Sidney, 45
Himelhoch, Dr. Jerome, quoted,
205-206

Hindus, Milton, quoted, 181, 270
Hitler, Adolph, 57, 204, 209, 221
Hoeliering, Franz, quoted, 72
Hoffman, 195

Hopkins, Dr. Ernest M., defends
quota system at Dartmouth Col-
lege, 134

Horkheimer, Dr. Max, quoted, 169-
DO

Homer, Dr. Harlan H., quoted, 139
Hotel Astor Corporation, 199
Hotels, exclusion of Jews by, 3-7,
24, 38, 114, 118, 125. See also
Seligman, Joseph
Howe, Irving, quoted, 260
Huguenots, 174

Human rights, defining and appli-
cation of, 227-228. See also Func-
tional equality
Huntington, Collis P., 18
Hyde, James Hazen, 150

Illinois Manufacturers’ Associa-
tion, 199

Immigration, as threat to native
American stock, 67-68; factors
in, 12-13, 15-17; increase in Jew-
ish, 18; Jewish and non-Jewish,
in relation to status of Jews, 149,
152-154; Jewish, stimulated by
American protection, 54-55; se-
lective, 69

Immigration Act of 1924, 16, 21,
58, 164, 169; condemned by lead-
ing Jews, 35-36; effect on anti-
Jewish prejudice, 81; on Jewish
life and institutions, 36; later so-
cial effects, 43; viewed as culmi-
nation of antialien movement,
35-36

Indian minority problem, 14, 17, 21
Indians, American, 12, 63
Industrial revolution, 8-13; bigotry
and intolerance in, 17; growth of

anti-Semitism from, 94-102; mi-
norities question in, 13 ff.; race
prejudice and anti-Semitism in,
11-22; social and cultural effects
of, 9-13; status distinctions in,
13; triumph of bourgeoisie in,
8-H

Industrial society, refashioning of,
to eliminate discrimination, 223-
224

Industrial tycoons, rise and social
influence of, 9-11, 18

Industry and finance, position and
influence of Jews in: advertising,
146; agriculture, 144, 152; amuse-
ment, 146, 148; automobile, 144;
aviation, 144; banking and fi-
nance, 143; boots and shoes, 145;
chemical, 144; clothing, 145; coal,
144; commerce and trade, 151-
152, 157; construction, 151; dairy
farming, 144; department stores,
145; drugstore chains, 145; fields
of greatest concentration, 147-
149; fields of negligible influence,
142-147; food-distribution chains,
145; food processing, 144; furni-
ture, 145; heavy machinery, 144;
general merchandising, 145; in-
surance, 143; law, 148; light and
power, 144; liquor and distilling,

145, 148; lumber, 144; mail-order,

146; manufacturing, 151-152;
marginal fields, 147-151, 171;

meat-packing, 144-145; mining,
144; motion pictures, 146, 150;
needle trades, 154; personal serv-
ices, 151; petroleum, 144; print-
ing and publishing, 146; radio,

146, 150; railroading, 144; scrap,
145; shipbuilding, 144; shipping,
144; stock exchanges, 143; tele-
phone and telegraph, 144; tex-
tiles, 144; tobacco, 145; trans-
portation, 144, 151

Industry and trade, limitations on
Jews imposed by, 48

Insurance companies, limitation on

Index

Jews imposed by, 48; position
and influence of Jews in, 143
Irish, 69, 81; stereotype of, 163
Italian Americans, 178
Italians, 81, 152

Jackson, Justice Robert H., 196
Japanese, agitation against, 16-17
Japanese Americans, 164
Jeffers, Joe, 189

Jewish stereotype, applied to non-
Jewish groups, 164; as clue to
anti-Semitism, 162; as reflection
of social relationships, 182-183;
badge of identification required
for, 178-179; contrasted with Ne-
gro stereotype, 163-164; group
skills as factors, 171-177; Jew-
baiting in relation to, 179; im-
bedded in American culture, 181;
immigration as factor, 84, 86-87;
measurement of, 112; migration
and social advancement as fac-
tors, 170-178; occurrence in lit-
erature, 181-182; persistence of,
84, 86-87. See also Stereotype
Jewish student quota. See Quota
system

Jewish War Veterans Adanta Post
No. 112, 214

Jews, affected by development of
capitalism, 149-150; as ideal
scapegoat group, 81-82; as immi-
grant stereotype, 84, 86-87; as
main target of misdirected ag-
gression, 81; as residual legatees
of the countertradition, 81-87;
assimilation of, as factor in per-
secution, 84-85; blamed for evils
of capitalism, 102; charged with
forcing United States into Sec-
ond World War, 45-46; emanci-
pation of, in Europe and Amer-
ica, 50-51; in industrial revolu-
tion, 95-96; identified with com-
munists, 100; industrial distribu-
tion, nature of, 147 ( see also In-
dustry and finance) ; influence of,

291

in national economy, 142-161;
marginal economic position of,
emphasized, 147-151; middle-
class position of, 151-156, 171;
migration and social advance-
ment of, 170-178; official and un-
official record of American pro-
tection of, compared, 55-56; poll
analysis of hostility to, 110-112;
poll estimates of economic and
political power of, compared
with other groups, 110-111; pro-
tection of, by American public
opinion, 54-55; by governmental
pronouncements, 53-54; ration-
alization of, as aliens, 105; rea-
sons for selection of, as target,
81-87; social prestige of, as cause
of persecution, 83; traits of,
caused by anti-Semitism, 110.
See also Jewish stereotype. For
foreign Jews, see ujtder Nation-
alities

Joly, Maurice, 269
Jordan, Dr. David Starr, quoted,
68

Josephson, Matthew, quoted, 8, 56
Josey, Dr. Charles Conant, quoted,
68

Joyce, James, quoted, 270
Judaeophobia, 87, 88
Jung, Harry, 190
Junkers, 98, 99

Jury polls, Jews excluded from, in
Georgia, 38

Kallen, Horace M., quoted, 49,
129, 226

Kamp, Joseph, 202
Kaplan, Rabbi Mordecai, quoted,
93, 161

Kautsky, Karl, quoted, 99-100
Keiley, Anthony M., 53
Kennedy, Joseph P., 201
Kenny, Robert W., 253
Kent, Tyler, 201

Kings County Hospital (New

Index

292

York City), attack on Jewish in-
terns in, 38

Kishineff, Bessarabia, pogroms in,
54

Klein, Isaac H., 74
Kluckholn, Dr. Clyde, quoted, 225,
235-236, 248-249
Kno w-N othingism, 14
Ku Klux Klan, 35, 39, 57, 70, 75,
81, 211, 217, 221, 253

Labor groups, anti-Semitism in, 134
La Farge, John, 11
La Guardia, Fiorello H., 43
Landon, Alfred, 42
Lamer, William A., Jr., 197
La Rochefoucauld, Francois de,
quoted, 82

Lasell Seminary (Boston), anti-
Jewish discrimination in, 136
Lasker, Dr. Bruno, quoted, 94
Law schools, quota system in, 133
Lazare, Bernard, quoted, 96
Lazarfeld, Dr. Paul F., quoted, 243-
244

Lazaron, Morris S., quoted, 41
Lehman, Herbert H., 35
Leland Stanford University, 68
Lerner, Max, quoted, 210-211
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 72
Lestchinsky, Jacob, quoted, 153-156
Levinger, Rabbi Lee J., quoted, 42,
50

Lewisohn, Ludwig, quoted, 51, 54,
71-72, 131

Liberal arts colleges, quota system
in, 136

Light and power industry, position
and influence of Jews in, 144
Lilienthal, David, 246
Lincoln, Abraham, 11, 77, 78
Lindbergh, Charles, 45, 194, 195,
203

Liquor industry, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 145, 148
Litchfield (Conn.) , anti-Jewish
discrimination in, 78-79
Lithuanians, 69

Loeb, Dr. Jacques, 24
Loeb, Solomon, 61
Long, Huey, quoted, 205
Loomis, Homer L., Jr., 207-220,
222, 253

Los Angeles (Calif.), antifascist
rally at, 197, 258-259; club exclu-
siveness in, 117-118; Jewish mer-
chants in, 157; vandalism in, 254
Lowell, A. Lawrence, advocates
Jewish quota at Harvard College,
38, 132

Lowenthal, Marvin, quoted, 95
Lubin, 19

Lumber industry, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 144
Lynch, Denis Tilden, quoted, 9
Lynd, Dr. Robert, quoted, 117, 118

McCormick, Col. Robert R., 199
McDermott, Malcolm, 198
McDonald, James E., 198
McFadden, Louis T., attacks
American Jews, 42
McGill, Ralph, 218
McKellar, Senator, quoted, 245-
246

McWilliams, Joe, 189, 207
Mail-order business, position and
influence of Jews in, 146
Malcolm, Roger and Dorothy,
murder of, 257

Manufacturing, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 151-152
Margalith, Aaron M., quoted, 52
Marginal industries, position and
influence of Jews in, 147-151, 171
“Marginal trading peoples,” 173
Marr, Wilhelm, coiner of “anti-
Semitism,” 88, 98

Marshall, Louis, on Immigration
Act of 1924, 35-36
Marx, Karl, quoted, 51
Masserman, Paul, quoted, 40
Massing, Dr. Paul, quoted, 99, 101,
162

Matthews, Brander, 72
Mayor’s Committee on Unity

Index

(New York), report on discrimi-
nation, 137

Meat-packing industry, position
and influence of Jews in, 144-
145

Medical schools, anti-Jewish dis-
crimination in, 48; decreased
Jewish enrollment in, 48; quota
system in, 133, 135-136
Melamed, S. M., quoted, 154
Melville, Herman, 11
Mexican Americans, federal policy
toward, 17
Mexicans, 168, 219
Middle class, position of Jews in,
151-156

Migration, as influence in stereo-
typing, 164-167, 170; factors pro-
ducing, 170-171. See also Immi-
gration

Millionaires. See Industrial tycoons;

Industrial Revolution
Mining industry, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 144
Minnis, R. E., 197
Minorities, dual federal policy
toward, 17; protection of, against
defamation, 251-256; scapegoat
function of, 250
Moore, Harold N., 198
Mores, importance of, in reducing
group prejudices, 247-248
Morgan, John Pierpont, 18
Morgenthau, Henry, 19
Morocco, Jewish persecution in,
opposed by United States, 53
Moseley, Maj. Gen. George Van
Horn, 126

Motion Picture Alliance, 197
Motion-picture industry, position
and influence of Jews in, 146, 150
Mount Holyoke College, anti-
Jewish discrimination in, 136
Mumford, Lewis, 11
Murphy, Justice Frank, quoted,
255-256

Mussolini, Benito, 204, 221
Myths, anti-Semitic, 56-68; con-

2 93

tributions to, 67-70; makers of,
57-67; origin and purpose of, 56-
57; relation to stereotypes, 162-
163. See also Anti-Semitism;
Jewish stereotype; Yellow Myth

Napoleon III, 269
National Association for Advance-
ment of Colored People, 78
National Association of Manufac-
turers, 67-68

National Community Relations
Advisory Council, study of em-
ployment discrimination by, 158-
159

National Economic Council, 197,
201

National economy, as basis of anti-
Semitism, 146-148, 154-158; posi-
tion and influence of Jews in,
142-161. See also Industry and
finance

National Guard (U. S.) , anti-Semi-
tism in, 126

National League of Mothers and
Women of America, 197
National Small Businessmen’s As-
sociation, 196
Nazis, 66, 91, 122, 223, 255
Nazism, 208, 209; as American
fascist model, 212-213
Needle trades, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 154
Negroes, 14, 32-33, 60, 63, 64, 69,
80, 83, 110, 112, 121, 134, 136, 137,
140, 162-163, 192, 236, 238, 246-
247, 257, 268; exclusion of, com-
pared with Jews, 121; minority
problem of, 14-15, 17, 21; stereo-
type of, 162-164, 168; victims of
Atlanta Putsch ( q.v .), 213-219
Neighborhood associations, limita-
tions on Jews imposed by, 48
New Deal, denounced as bastard
Marxism, 202
New Mexico, 17

New Orleans, Italian lynching in,
17

Index

294

New York; antidiscrimination law
of, 205

New York Bar Association, denies
membership to Jewish lawyer,

4

New York City, discrimination in,
137

Nickerson, Hoffman, quoted, 20-21
Nims, A. Dwight, 197
Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League,
207, 212

Numerus clausus . See Quota sys-
tem

Nussbaum, Rabbi Max, 254

Oak Woods Cemetery (Chicago),
vandalism at, 254
Odic, Dr. Charles, quoted, 262
O'Donnell, John, 45
Orientals, 66, 219; minority prob-
lem of, 15-17, 71
Orlansky, Harold, quoted, 176
Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 58
Ostracism, effects of, 172-174
Owen, John Bryan, 201

Palestine homeland, 36, 53, 87
Parent-child relationships, as factor
in group hostilities, 244
Parkes, James, quoted, 55
Partington, Vernon L., on indus-
trial revolution, 10
Parsons, Talcott, quoted, 43, 82
Pascal, Blaise, 238
Patton, Gen. George S., 45
Pegler, Westbrook, quoted, 70, 257
Peirce, Charles S., 11
Pekelis, Alexander H., quoted, 48,
251

Pelley, William Dudley, 47, 184,
189, 192; anti-Jewish propaganda
by, 44-45

Penalization, as stimulant of social
skills, 174-177

Periodicals. See Publications
Perkins, Frances, fake birth certifi-
cate of, 42

Persia, Jewish persecution in, op-
posed by United States, 53
Personal services, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 151
Personality formation, as means of
combating race prejudice, 244
Persons, Stow, quoted, 29-30
Petroleum industry, position and
influence of Jews in, 144
Pettengill, Samuel, 197
Phagan, Mary, murder of, 31
Philippine Islands, Chinese stereo-
type in, 164
Pinsker, Leo, 87
Plessy v. Ferguson , 15
Poland, 54; Jewish persecution in,
opposed by United States, 53
Poles, 81, 86, 153; stereotype of, in
Germany, 163
Polish Jews, 60, 61, 62, 104
Poll analyses of anti-Semitism, 103,
110-112

Pound, Ezra, 181

Prejudice as product of social con-
ditioning, 267. See also Anti-
Semitism

President’s Committee on Civil
Rights, 229, 243; on rights of
private groups, 234-235; recom-
mendations of, 230-231
“Prestige” organizations, exclusion-
ist influence of, 115-118, 124
Price, Jack, 216

Princeton University, anti-Jewish
discrimination in, 136
Princetonians, fascist appeal to,
209-210

Printing and publishing, position
and influence of Jews in, 146
Private governments, exclusion
rights of, in relation to state’s
right of protection, 231-235
Professions, influence of Jews in,
148, 151, 152

Protestant Fundamentalists, Jew-
baiting by, 83
Protestantism, 69, 159
Protestants, 110, 111, 159

Index

Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
283

Publications:

Articles and stories:

“Imaginary Jew, The” (John
Berryman), 120
“Intellectual Pre-eminence of
Jews in Modern Europe,
The” (Thorstein Veblen),
172

“Jew in the Thom, The” (folk
tale), 269
Books:

American Rich, The (Hoff-
man Nickerson), 20
Aspects of Jewish Power in
the United States ( Dearborn
Independent), 34
Brothers under the Skin (Carey
McWilliams), 229, 230
Checkmate for Rabble-Rous-
ers, etc. (Fineberg), 258
Conquest of a Continent, The
(Madison Grant), 59
Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century , The (Houston
Stewart Chamberlain), 58
Ghetto , The (Louis Wirth),
237

International Jew, The ( Dear-
born Independent), 34, 37
Into the Darkness (Lothrop
Stoddard), 65-66
Jewish Activities in the United
States ( Dearborn Independ-
ent), 34

Jewish Influences in American
Life ( Dearborn Independ-
ent), 34

Jews in America, The (Burton
J. Hendrick), 61, 142
Lord Jim (Joseph Conrad), 86
Magnificent Amber sons, The
(Booth Tarkington), 13
Mein Kampf (Adolph Hitler),
212

Money Powers of Europe
(Paul H. Emden), 174

295

Of Time and the River
(Thomas Wolfe), 181
Passing of the Great Race, The
(Madison Grant), 58
Personal History (Vincent
Sheean), 127

Pickwick Papers (Charles
Dickens), 208

Revolt against Civilization,
The (Lothrop Stoddard), 63
Rising Tide of Color, The
(Lothrop Stoddard), 63
Smear Terror, The (John T.
Flynn), 202

Social Life of a Modem Com-
munity, The (Lloyd War-
ner), 116

Sound and the Fury, The
(William Faulkner), 179
“ Stepchildren ” of France
(Charles Odic), 262
Theory of the Leisure Class,
The (Thorstein Veblen), 12
Ulysses (James Joyce), 270
With Firmness in the Right
(Cyrus Adler and Aaron M.
Margalith) , 52

Periodicals, yearbooks, etc.:
American Jewish Historical
Society Publications, 3
American Jewish Yearbook ,
23, 24, 33, 39, 41, 42, 44, 130
American Mercury, 146
Army and Navy Register, 126
Atlanta Journal, 215
Black Book, The, 223
Chicago Tribune, 195, 198, 199,
202

Christian Century, 160
Collier’s, 146
Constitution, 218
Dearborn Independent, 33, 34,
35

Decennial Census of Jewish
College Students, 137
Destiny, 212

Dictionary of American Biog-
raphy, 5

Index

296

Dictionary of Sociology, 91
Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences , 121
Esquire, 146

Fortune, 103, 104, 110-111, 142-
148

Forum, 6

Friends of Democracy Bulle-
tin, 199, 202

Good Housekeeping, 146
Hall-Mark, 209

Journal of Clinical Psychology,
140

Journal of Dental Education,
139

Life, 146
Nation, 37

New York Daily News, 45,
254

New York Times, 199
ORT Economic Review, 176
PM, 209, 210

Political Science Quarterly, 67
Princetonian, 209
Saturday Evening Post, 146
Social Register , 208
Thunderbolt, 213
Time, 146

Watson's Magazine, 32
Who's Who, 57, 69
Woman's Home Companion,
146

X-Ray, 212
Puerto Rico, 17

Quakers, 173-174
Quinn, May, 202

Quinn-Ives Bill (New York), 229
Quota system, 17, 38-40, 47, 132-
141, 238-241; aligned with indus-
trial exclusion practices, 139;
based on structure of dominant
industries, 141; considered in bar
associations, 133; false justifica-
tions for, 238-239; in colleges and
universities, 132-141; in dental
schools, 138-139; in law schools,
.133; in liberal arts colleges, 136;

in medical schools, 48, 133, 135-
136; in teaching profession, 130—
132, 137-138; lines of attack on,
239-241

Race prejudice, in post-Civil War
period, 15-18

Racism, myth of, 58-60, 63-70; ed-
ucation against, 241-247; method
of combating, 240-241. See also
Anti-Semitism

Radcliffe College, anti-Jewish dis-
crimination in, 136
Radio industry, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 146, 150
Railroad Yardmasters of North
America, 196

Railroading, position and influence
of Jews in, 144

Rankin, Congressman John, 46, 192,
195; quoted, 246
Raskob, John J., 201, 202
Rathenau, Walter, quoted, 106
Reading, Viscount, 119
Real estate operators, anti-Jewish
discrimination by, 38, 46, 48
Recreational centers, exclusion
practices of, 114

Redfield, Dr. Robert, quoted, 238,
239, 247-248

Regnery, William H., 196
Reich, Nathan, quoted, 151-152,
238

Religious differences, heightened
by economic pressures, 159-161
Religious freedom, as opposed to
anti-Semitism, 50-51
Renan, Ernest, quoted, 70
Republican National Finance Com-
mittee, 196

Residential districts, exclusion
from, 118, 125

Resorts, exclusion practices of, 46,
114, 118, 125

Reston, James, quoted, 199
Restriction of Jewish setdement
areas, 237

Rhine, Alice Hyneman, quoted, 6-7

Index

Rhodes, James Ford, 67
Richardson, 11

Riesman, David, quoted, 83, 119,
150, 151, 251

“Right to be different,” in relation
to national solidarity, 235-236
Ripley, William Z., quoted, 67
Robnett, George Washington, 197
Rockefeller, John D., 18
Roebling, Washington A., 11
Rogers, Howard Emmett, 197
Rogge, O. John, quoted, 24 5
Roman Catholicism, 13, 69, 159
Roman Catholics, 110, 111, 137, 159,
193, 238

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 195,
240

Roosevelt, Theodore, 16; quoted,
54

Roper, Elmo, quoted, 110-112, 195
Rosenbluth, Capt., charged with
murder by Dearborn Indepejtd-
ent, 35

Rosenwald, Julius, 19
Ross, Dr. Edward A., 31, 67
Rumania, 54; anti-Semitism in, 25;
Jewish persecution in, opposed
by United States, 53
Rumanians and Harvard graduates,
study of relative reproduction,
64

Rumely, Edward A., 202
Russia, 103; anti-Semitism as state
policy in, 25-26; emigration of
Jewish workers from, 25; Jew-
ish persecution in, opposed by
United States, 53, 54; pogroms
in, condemned, 54
Russian Jews, 62
Ryder, Albert P., 11

Samuel, Maurice, quoted, 95, 96,
156, 177-178, 242
Samuels, Sir Herbert, 119
Sanford, quoted, 104
Saratoga Springs exclusion incident,
3-7. See also Seligman, Joseph

2 97

Sartre, Jean-Paul, quoted, 263-264,
266-268

Saveth, Dr. Edward Norman,
quoted, 67

Scandinavians, 120-121
Scapegoatism, 83, 84, 87, 103, 105,
179; in relation to Jewish stereo-
type, 179; Jew as ideal scapegoat,
81-87, 111
Schiff, Jacob, 19
Schiller, Johann C. F. von, 72
Schizophrenia in American culture,
72-78

Schools, anti-Jewish discrimination
by, 39

Schouler 4 James, 67
Schuyler, Mrs. Livingston Rower,
202

Scrap industry, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 145
“Second American Revolution.”

See Industrial revolution
Segal, Eugene, 195; quoted, 196
Segregation principle, approved by
United States Supreme Court, 15
Seligman family, 19
Seligman, Jesse, 7
Seligman, Joseph, exclusion of,
from Saratoga Springs hotel, 3-
7, 15, 21, 29, 47, 125, 181
Seligman incident. See Seligman,
Joseph

Sephardic Jews, 61
Severson, Dr. A. L., 29; quoted, 28
Shaler, Nathaniel S., 11
Sheean, Vincent, 128; quoted, 127
Shipbuilding, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 144
Shipping, position and influence of
Jews in, 144
Shumlin, Herman, 134
Sibley, Goldsmith, 216
Simmel, Dr. Ernst, quoted, 109
Simon, Yves R., quoted, 238
Skills, Jewish, as by-product of
penalization, 174-177; as deter-
minant of social status, 171; so-
cial conditioning of, 172-175

Index

298

Slavs, 69
Sloss, 19

Smertenfeo, Johan J., quoted, 40
Smith, Gerald L. K., 57, 122, 184,
189, 197, 199, 203, 257, 258, 259
Smith College, anti-Jewish discrim-
ination in, 136

Snyder, Dr. Louis L., quoted, 63
Social prestige, as cause of Jewish
persecution, 83

Social sciences, combating of anti-
Semitism through, 241, 244
Socio-economic conflicts, rational-
ization of, for racism, 67-68
Sombart, Werner, 94
Southard, Earl, 196
Speech as weapon of abuse, 255-256
Spivak, John, 184
Springfield (111.), Negress beating
in, 78

Steinberg, Dr. Milton, quoted, 252
Stereotype, as rationalization of re-
lationships, 242; as social myth,
162-163; defined, 162; frustration
as factor in, 169; imbedded in
culture, 169; Jewish, see Jewish
stereotype; migration as factor,
164-167, 170; Negro and Jewish
contrasted, 163-164; non-Nordic,
164; of Boston Irish, 163; of
French Canadians, 170; of Negro,
162-164, 168; of Polish workers
in Germany, 163; perpetuated by
personnel practices and company
policy, 168; by labor unions, 169;
re-enforced by economic factors,
167; by industrial stratification,
167; rooting of, in minority and
majority groups, compared, 182-
183. See also Jewish stereotype
Sterilization, for race betterment,
65-66

Stewart, A. T., 5

Stock exchanges, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 143
Stoddard, Lothrop, as myth-maker,
57, 63-67

Stoecker, Adolf, 97, 99

Stone, Dr. H. E., quoted, 129-130
Stopel, Wilhelm, quoted, 94
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 79
Straus, Nathan, 38
Straus, Oscar S., 19, 61
Strecker, Dr. Edward A., quoted,
225

Strong, Dr. Donald S., quoted, 41,
94, 186-188, 190, 193
Sullivan, 11

Supreme Court (U.S.), 15, 159-160
Sutra, 19

Switzerland, Jewish persecution in,
opposed by United States, 53
Syracuse University Medical
School, decrease of Jewish ad-
missions at, 135
Syrians, 164

Talmadge, Herman, 222
Tarkington, Booth, quoted, 13
Teacher agencies, Jewish exclusion
by, 37

Teaching profession, exclusion of
Jews from, 130-132, 137-138
Telephone and telegraph industry,
position and influence of Jews in,
144

Textile industry, position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 144
Thoreau, Henry D., 11
Thyssen, 204

Tobacco industry, position and in-
fluence of Jews in, 145
“Tolerance propaganda,” evalu-
ated, 243-244

Toynbee, Arnold, quoted, 174
Trachtenberg, Joshua, quoted, 224
Trade: limitations on Jews im-
posed in, 48; position and influ-
ence of Jews in, 151-152, 157
Tradition, as source of condition-
ing for prejudice, 80-81
Transportation industry, anti-Jew-
ish discrimination by, 24; posi-
tion and influence of Jews in, 144,
151

Index

299

Treitschke, Heinrich von, quoted,
104

Tripoli, treaty of 1796 with, 51
Truman, President Harry S., 51
Turkey, Jewish persecution in, op-
posed by United States, 53

“Under Men” of Lothrop Stod-
dard, 63-67

Undesirability, myth of, 60-63
Union for Social Justice, 42, 253
Union of Canadian Fascists, 213
United Nations, 195, 227; attacked
by anti-Semites, 195
United States Army, anti-Semitism
in, 125-126; exclusion of Jewish
ministers from, defeated, 3
United States Government, foreign
pronouncements in behalf of
Jewish freedom, 53-54
University of Berlin, revival of
Jewish quota demanded at, 39

Valentin, Hugo, quoted, 49, 50,
107

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 18
Vassar College, anti-Jewish dis-
crimination in, 136
Veblen, Thorstein, quoted, 12, 172—
173

Vincent, Col. Charles, 197
von Bohlen, Krupp, 204
von Holst, Hermann, 67

Walker, Ezekiel, lynching of, 73-
74

Warburg, Felix M., 19, 35
Warner, Dr. Lloyd, quoted, 116,
152-153

Washington, George, quoted, 51
Wassermann, Jacob, quoted, 249-
250

Watson, Tom, 31-33, 74
Weber, Max, 165
Weir, Ernest T., 199
Weiss, Arthur, 214
Weitzenkom, Louis, quoted, 37
Weldon, Samuel, 199
Wellesley College, anti-Jewish dis-
crimination in, 136
Wertham, Dr. Frederic, quoted,
226

Western Golf Association, exclu-
sionist policy of, 125
Wharton, Edith, 181
Wheeler, Senator Burton, 46
Whitman, Walt, 11, 72
Whitman, Willson, quoted, 78-79
Wilson, Woodrow, 33
Winrod, Gerald B., 196
Wirth, Louis, quoted, 237
Wise, Dr. Stephen S., quoted, 132
Wolfe, Thomas, 181
Wood, Gen. Robert E., 199

“Yankee City” investigations, 152-
153

Yellow myth, 268-270
Yellow peril, 69

Zellers, John A., 202
Zimmerlee, John H., Jr., 207

126 611